Page:New lands - (IA newlands00fort).pdf/29

 omers? What can be thought of our whole existence, its nature and its destiny?

That our existence, a thing within one solar system, or supposed solar system, is a stricken thing that is mewling through space, shocking able-minded, healthy systems with the sores on its sun, its ghastly moons, its civilizations that are all broken out with sciences; a celestial leper, holding out doddering expanses into which charitable systems drop golden comets? If it be the leprous thing that our findings seem to indicate, there is no encouragement for us to go on. We can not discover: we can only betray new symptoms. If I be a part of such a stricken thing, I know of nothing but sickness and sores and rags to reason with: my data will be postules; my interpretations will be inflammations—