94 FROM NEBULA TO NEBULA 



the existence of nebulae, for these were not discovered by 

 Sir Wm. Herschel until two score years after Newton's 

 death, hence the characteristic forms of these wonderful 

 objects carried no suggestion to him. (5) He knew of 

 the existence of only six great planets. Had he known of 

 the asteroids, he might have thought twice before predi- 

 cating divine agency to set these, like the great planets, 

 in what he conceived to be miraculous and studied motion. 

 (6) He knew of the secular acceleration of the moon, 

 but he did not foresee that mathematics alone would 

 never solve it. (7) The problem of the origin of the 

 sun 's heat troubled him not, for to him it was transient as 

 the earth. (8) He had no ideas whatever about the 

 genesis of new stars, or about their variability. (9) The 

 use of steam as a source of mechanical power was un- 

 known, and, of course, so was the mechanical theory of 

 heat as well. (10) Spectrum analysis had" not yet 

 demonstrated that the sun and stars are essentially of the 

 same chemical composition as our base earth. (11) 

 Finally, Newton lacked the advantage we possess of 

 factual knowledge that his tidal theory is all wrong. Had 

 he had this knowledge he might have taken a second 

 thought and, retracing his steps, hit upon the true solu- 

 tion. After severally weighing this formidable array of 

 his handicaps, ask yourself whether the presumption 

 should be in favor of, or against, Newton's theory of tides 

 or, for that matter, any of his theories, and what should 

 be our duty in the premises f 



It is curious that our Newtonian friends, who lay 

 such great store upon the value of the concordance of 

 moon and tide in the single particular that each has the 

 same habit of arriving at any given port 51 minutes later 

 each succeeding day, pedal most softly on the dissonance 

 between the meridianal places where these phenomena 

 respectively appear at the same instant of time. Ac- 

 cording to Newton's main hypothesis, the tidal crest 

 should exist at all times nowhere but exactly beneath the 

 moon. Were this, indeed, the case, the causal relation- 

 ship between moon and tide would be all but conclusively 

 demonstrated. But the uncompromising fact is that the 



