84 FROM NEBULA TO NEBULA 



fronted with the necessity of providing a foil to it in 

 the nature of a centrifugal force. We saw further how 

 in order to achieve this he proceeded to make a series 

 of violent assumptions, such as, uncaused motions, 

 ghost-matter, curvature of motion without expenditure 

 of energy, and the like, and how he spurned altogether 

 his own third law of motion as to the necessity and 

 equivalence of reaction to action. There too the issue 

 lay between subscription to chimeras or denial of the 

 principle of gravitation; and the choice that science 

 made we know. Here in the case of tides and the earth's 

 inertia 1 rotational motion we are confronted with 

 another similar alternative. Science having irrevocably 

 committed herself to the doctrine of inertial motion be- 

 cause of the imaginary dependence of gravitation there- 

 on, she is now obliged, for consistency-s sake, to recon- 

 cile to it every adverse fact in the way. Drains upon 

 this rotational inertia must be theoretically minimized 

 even at the expense of common sense and self-delusion. 

 Tidal films offer vastly less resistance than tidal hills, 

 hence films it must be. Thus it is seen that out of a 

 mistaken sense of devotion to the law of gravitation, 

 science has committed herself, (1) to a denial of the 

 reality of substantial tides, (2) to a theory of tides 

 utterly contradictory of the observed phenomena (as 

 the preceding quotations show), (3) to a repudiation 

 of one half of the first law of gravitation, whose preser- 

 vation is the very thing sought, (4) to virtual affirma- 

 tion that the earth's rotation is not due to current 

 causes, (5) that planets do not observe the law of 

 physics as to the position of the center of gravity, but 

 why lengthen the painful chain of error, for it is endless. 



But it is not true that tidal resistance tends to 

 retard the earth's rotation. 



