One of Mr. Scott’s objections was that if a projectile is fired from a moving body there is a difference in the distance to which it carries according to the direction in which it is sent.  But as in practice there is not the slightest difference whichever way the thing is done, in the case of the earth ’we have a forcible overthrow of all fancies relative to the motion of the earth, and a striking proof that the earth is not a globe.’

This is altogether one of the quaintest arguments we have ever seen.  It never seems to occur to the author, among other things, that when the firing and falling of the shot all take place upon the moving body, there is nothing whatever to compare them with.  As a matter of fact, of course, a shot fired at an elephant does actually often travel towards the marksman, but much slower than the marksman travels.  Mr. Scott probably would not like to contemplate the fact that the elephant, properly speaking, swings round and hits the bullet.  To us it appears full of a rich cosmic humour.

I will only give one other example of the astronomical proofs: 

’If the earth were a globe, the distance round the surface, say, at 45 degrees south latitude, could not possibly be any greater than the same latitude north; but since it is found by navigators to be twice the distance—­to say the least of it—­or double the distance it ought to be according to the globular theory, it is a proof that the earth is not a globe.’

This sort of thing reduces my mind to a pulp.  I can faintly resist when a man says that if the earth were a globe cats would not have four legs; but when he says that if the earth were a globe cats would not have five legs I am crushed.

But, as I have indicated, it is not in the scientific aspect of this remarkable theory that I am for the moment interested.  It is rather with the difference between the flat and the round worlds as conceptions in art and imagination that I am concerned.  It is a very remarkable thing that none of us are really Copernicans in our actual outlook upon things.  We are convinced intellectually that we inhabit a small provincial planet, but we do not feel in the least suburban.  Men of science have quarrelled with the Bible because it is not based upon the true astronomical system, but it is certainly open to the orthodox to say that if it had been it would never have convinced anybody.

If a single poem or a single story were really transfused with the Copernican idea, the thing would be a nightmare.  Can we think of a solemn scene of mountain stillness in which some prophet is standing in a trance, and then realize that the whole scene is whizzing round like a zoetrope at the rate of nineteen miles a second?  Could we tolerate the notion of a mighty King delivering a sublime fiat and then remember that for all practical purposes he is hanging head downwards in space?  A strange fable might be written of a man who was blessed or cursed with the Copernican eye, and saw all men on the earth like tintacks clustering round a magnet.  It would be singular to imagine how very different the speech of an aggressive egoist, announcing the independence and divinity of man, would sound if he were seen hanging on to the planet by his boot soles.