84 FROM NEBULA TO NEBULA 



Newton himself was so completely persuaded by this 

 evidence of the moon's being the mother of the tides that 

 it never occurred to him, nor indeed does it seem to have 

 occurred to anyone but the present writer, to cast about 

 for any other solution. That a new solution is impera- 

 tively demanded, however, is rendered certain by the can- 

 did confessions of the Newtonians themselves, who, after 

 two centuries of ceaseless striving to fit their theory to 

 nature, have finally agreed among themselves that the 

 two are utterly irreconcilable. Professional astronomers, 

 of course, all know this without needing to be told ; but in 

 order to satisfy the lay reader that such is really the case 

 let me quote these additional passages from Young and 

 Darwin (See also p. 10 ante) : 



The establishment of a port is the mean interval between the 

 time of high water at that port and the next preceding passage of 

 the moon across that meridian. At New York, for instance, this 

 establishment is 8h. 13111. although the actual interval varies about 

 22 minutes on each side of the mean at different times of the 

 month. (Genl. Astr., p. 403) 



It is interesting to reflect that our tides today depend even 

 more on what occurred yesterday or the day before in the 

 Southern Pacific and Indian oceans than on the direct action of 

 the moon today * * * * the problem is one of insoluble mystery. 

 (Darwin's The Tides, p. 188). 



In fact, the evanescence of the diurnal inequality is not much 

 closer to the truth than the large inequality predicted by the 

 equilibrium theory; and both theories must be abandoned as satis- 

 factory explanations of "the true condition of affairs. (Ibid., p. 

 180.) 



It is but one of many glaring inconsistencies of 

 modern astronomical science that, in spite of these and an 

 unlimited number of other such damning admissions of 

 the objective falsity of Newton's tidal theory, our scien- 

 tists nevertheless continue to teach it in the schools as 

 one of the great scientific gospels. All the so-called 



