THE TIDES 87 



the arrival of successive high tides at any given port 

 51 minutes in both cases there is a no less startling 

 discrepancy as to the meridianal places of the moon and 

 high tide at any given moment. According to the main 

 hypothesis, high tide should occur immediately under 

 the moon ; for instance, when the moon is on the meridian 

 of New York, high tide should then be filling that city's 

 harbor. Instead } we find that when this latter event 

 occurs the moon has preceded it by about eight hours, 

 and is already some thirty degrees below New York's 

 western horizon ! Why this great hiatus between cause 

 and effect? Newton claims it is due to the "dragging" 

 of the tides, arising from the presence of interposing 

 land masses, friction on the ocean beds, and the inertia of 

 the water itself. 



The assumption that the moon draws the oceans 

 away from the earth's solid part clearly implies a superi- 

 ority in the degree of the intensity of her attraction 

 upon the oceans, as contrasted with her pull on the kernel, 

 and a relative holding back of the latter. Newton knew 

 as certainly, although not so accurately as we, that the 

 density of the earth's solid part is several times greater 

 than that of water and that, by the strict law of mass, the 

 kernel, notwithstanding its slightly greater distance from 

 the moon, should be attracted much more powerfully than 

 the oceans in front of it. He knew, also, that the resul- 

 tant effect of such action could only be to shallow the 

 seas on the earth's moonward side instead of deepening 

 (raising) them. This conclusion, however, did not suit 

 Newton 's preconceptions in the least, for it meant re- 

 tracting his previous reasoning, restoring the original, to 

 him obnoxious, ratio of 180 to 1 in the sun's favor, and in 

 short, relinquishing altogether his cherished theory of the 

 lunar causation of tides. Unequal to this sacrifice, he 

 sought away out of the dilemma by tampering again 

 with his own law of gravitation. As one lie leads to 

 another, so one basic misinterpretation of nature's laws 

 leads to an endless chain of absurdities. He had already 

 dared to distort the second clause of the law to read that 

 tidal forces vary, not as the inverse squares but as the 



