THE AUTHOR'S THEORIES OUTLINED 43 



in the interval between the moon's passages, and that 

 between high tides, and (2) the contradiction, that high 

 water occurs, not under the moon, but some thirty de- 

 grees below her horizon. As he then conceived it, his 

 problem lay in harmonizing these two adverse facts with 

 the traditional hypothesis of the moon being the true 

 tidal cause, and with his own new theory of gravitation. 

 He was thus presented with a choice between making the 

 interval- harmonize with the positional factor, or bending 

 the latter into accord with the former. Unfortunately 

 for himself and the good of the science, he chose the latter 

 course, and undertook to prove how, by attracting the 

 waters under her, the moon creates the reverse phen- 

 omenon of elevating them at those places farthest re- 

 moved from her. In other words, he resolved to make 

 black white by proving the phenomenon of repulsion to 

 be the effect of attraction. Is it to be wondered at, then, 

 that after generations of observation of the physical facts 

 this tidal theory should have proved as "much wrong as 

 possible"? 



Having begun wrong, Newton stumbled onward from 

 one tragic blunder to another; in which course he has 

 hitherto been followed with blind servility by his hero- 

 worshipping followers. Let us briefly recite his various 

 steps : 



The first obstacle he encountered was the fact that 

 the sun's attraction upon the earth is some 180 times 

 stronger than the moon's; why, then, should not the sun 

 rather than the moon be the cause of the tides f Dismis- 

 sing this latter suggestion as wholly unworthy of con- 

 sideration, he seized upon the notion that in raising up 

 the waters under her the moon really has to draw in the 

 surplus waters from the marginal areas of the earth's 

 disc. Arguing from this he concluded that the tidal 

 forces of the sun and moon operate obliquely, and con- 

 sequently that they vary, not as the inverse squares, but 

 as the inverse cubes of their distances. Computing thus, 

 he made out the moon's power to exceed the sun's in the 

 ratio of about four to one. 



