THE LAW OF EQUILIBRIUM 135 



does, generate a reverse movement of the rotating mass 

 in a larger circle around an extraneous point or axis. We 

 are not merely hypothesising, then, when we predicate 

 that the solar system, because of its integral rotation 

 around an axis within the sun's mass, has a secondary 

 motion of precession around just such an extraneous 

 axis. Whether we can prove the deduction by an appeal 

 to celestial phenomena remains to be seen, but the prin- 

 ciple itself is not to be disputed. 



Before stating conclusions, let me try to picture to 

 the mind's eye of the patient reader the relation, as I 

 conceive it, of the sun's orbit to the plane of the ecliptic, 

 the Vertex, the pole of the ecliptic, the geographksal pole, 

 and the precessional circle. 



Imagine, if you please, an enormous cone suspended 

 in space, inverted, with an apical angle of 47, and its up- 

 turned circular base, level with the ecliptic, possessing a 

 diameter on the order of a thousand times the distance of 

 Uranus from the sun. (See Fig. 4). Call the central 

 point of this base (whose circumference constitutes the 

 sun's gyroscopic orbit) the Centrum and from it drop a 

 plummet to the apex of the cone some two trillion miles 

 below, and call the plumb-line the cone 's axis. Now this 

 apex, be it understood, is the Vertex, as previously de- 

 fined ; that is to say it is the (blank) point in space toward 

 which the earth (and our system) is being caused to fall 

 by the composite of the stellar attractions the Prime 

 Eesultant. 



