120 FKOM NEBULA TO NEBULA 



turn, the four moons of Jupiter, and the phases of Venus ; 

 and improvements of the instrument have brought to 

 light countless other wonders. No doubt the bigoted 

 Libri, Galileo ? s bitterest critic, had he had the power, 

 would have been glad to reverse the telescope for all time, 

 as a means of guarding mankind from the perils of unbe- 

 lief. In effect, that is just about what Newton did. He 

 found humanity possessed of the knowledge that bodies 

 seek their lowest centers of gravity, a knowledge which 

 had previously been arrived at by painstakingly bringing 

 within the purview of human perception what before had 

 been hidden from sight; and, for mere expediency's sake, 

 he deliberately suppressed that knowledge by snuffing 

 out the torch by whose light it had been revealed. In 

 short, he "reversed the telescope, " and for this all the 

 scientific world has never ceased to hold him in rever- 

 ence! Forced to choose between Newton's tidal theory 

 and Nature's solemn contradiction, our modern astron- 

 omers uphold the first against the last, so great is the 

 prestige of Newton to-day, who, during his long life, was 

 ridiculed and condemned. For what use is it that man 

 has invented the telescope, the microscope, the ther- 

 mometer, the barometer, the bolometer, the spectroscope, 

 the photographic plate, etc., if their valuable evidence is 

 thus to be arbitrarily set aside to suit the exigencies of 

 crazy hypothesis I 



Of course, there is the possibility that many scien- 

 tists are already convinced, not necessarily from any ar- 

 guments I have here advanced, but as a result of their 

 own private reflections. However, they have none of 

 them, so far, seen fit to speak out ; possibly because of a 

 wholesome and well-founded dread of the hierarchical 

 lash. Your Newtonian professor may, indeed, say with 

 Darwin that the tidal theory is as false as can be, but he 

 must, under peril of dismissal, subserviently couple the 

 heresy with the retraction that he believes in it notwith- 

 standing, and that he will continue faithfully to teach it 

 to his classes as one of the gospels of science. You may, 

 owever, test his sincerity, if you will, after some such 

 nner as the following : 



