rembling child, elated with the success of its first feeble steps
alone, suppose it had exhausted all the possibilities of life. We are
but spelling over the big letters on the title page of the primary book
of knowledge. There be other pages and grander chapters further on.
There be greater volumes, and sweeter, more expressive tongues which man
may learn some day.

"Has a reasoning Divinity created the heavens and peopled the myriad
stars with thinking, capable beings, who must be perpetually isolated?
Or may they not know each other some time? But shall we attempt to sail
the vast heavens with a paper kite, or try to fly God's distances with
the wings of fluttering birds? Nay; we must use God's engine for such a
task. Has He tied the planets to the sun, and knitted the suns and their
systems into one great universe obedient to a single law, with no
possibility that we may use that law for intercommunication? With what
wings do the planets fly around the sun, and the suns move through the
heavens? With the wings of gravity! The same force for minute satellite
or mighty sun. It is God's omnipotence applied to matter. Let us fly
with that!"

"But will you permit me to suggest that we are soaring before the
projectile is built?" I put in.

"Quite right. Let us come back to Earth, and return to facts. My studies
in physics led me to believe that all natural forces--gravity,
centrifugal force, and even capillary attraction--are, like electricity
and magnetism, both positive and negative in their action. If they do
not normally alternate between a positive and negative current, as
electricity does, they can be made to do so. Gravity and capillary
attraction, as we know them, always act positively; that is, they always
_attract_. On the other hand, centrifugal force always acts negatively;
that is, it always _repels_. But each of these forces, I believe, can
temporarily be made to act opposite to its usual manner. I know this to
be the case with gravity, for I have caused its positive and negative
currents to alternate; that is, I have made it repel and then attract,
and so on, at will, by changing the polarity of the body which it acts
upon."

"Now that I remember it," I added, "our original ideas of magnetism were
that it simply attracted. We knew the lodestone drew the steel, but only
on better acquaintance did we learn of its alternating currents,
attractive and repellant."

"I have positively demonstrated with my