THE TIDES 93 



than merely to acquire stores of isolated items of infor- 

 mation ; they connote classification and generalization of 

 these data into systems that not only broaden our con- 

 cepts, but supply keys to much that remains unknown. 



Now, if the fundamental truths were the first to come 

 into our knowledge, the building up of a science would be 

 a comparatively simple matter. But they by no means do 

 so. Even so, little harm would come of it, were it not for 

 the proneness of all of us to think and act mechanically, 

 along conventional lines, and to look with disfavor and 

 often with contempt on the " crank " who presumes to set 

 his opinions up against those of the reactionary majority. 

 Since Newton's day, numerous such fundamental truths 

 in astronomy have come to light that our scientists have 

 been treating as minor and tacking here and there onto 

 the most convenient niches in the superstructure, instead 

 of courageously razing, as they should, the ramshackle 

 structure to the bed rock and rebuilding solidly with free 

 hand and fresh initative. 



Who among us, I ask, gifted with ordinary intelli- 

 gence, a heart of perseverence, sufficient leisure, an over- 

 powering love for and interest in the subject, and means 

 of access to the great stores of modern data, should not 

 be capable of constructing de novo a better system of 

 cosmology than Newton or any other man or genius could 

 be expected to do in a day when such basic indispensable 

 truths as the following were unknown and unsuspected! 



1. The age of the earth. Newton conceived it as 

 especially created for man only 6000 years ago, and that, 

 in another paltry millennium or so, it is doomed to perish 

 in flame and ashes. This notion of the earth's transiency 

 narrowed his outlook on the greater universe most 

 pathetically, insomuch that, in all his deliberations, he 

 overlooked altogether the relations of the solar system 

 to the stars, and treated it as a universe unto itself. (2) 

 He did not know of the sun's motion, or that the stars 

 move in regular courses. (3) He took no account of the 

 greatest dynamical factor in nature, namely, the com- 

 posite of the stellar attractions. (4) He never heard of 



