THE AUTHOR'S THEORIES OUTLINED 45 



this solution save for this conflicting circumstance, 

 namely, that in that case his improvised law of cubes 

 would have to be ruled out and the main premise (as to 

 the moon being the chief cause) would fall by the board. 

 Now, how was the law of lowest center originally 

 discovered? Objects falling naturally through the air 

 fall with such velocity that no human eye is quick and 

 keen enough to follow their gyrations upon themselves. 

 In order to discover the secret of their maneuvers, there- 

 fore, some true-born scientist in the dim past conceived 

 the idea of slowing-up the fall of divers objects without 

 at the same time depriving them of the freedom of turn- 

 ing upon themselves as Nature might prompt. In other 

 words, he brought the evidence within the purview of 

 human perceptions. Now, what did Newton do, with his 

 vaunted vacuum-tube experiment? In gross defiance of 

 all scientific rules and precedents he systematically set 

 to work, not only to restore the natural difficulties which 

 his predecessor had been at pains to overcome, but actu- 

 ally to accentuate them by every artificial means his in- 

 genuity could devise. By limiting the choice of ma- 

 terials to glass, he incidentally shortened the practicable 

 length of the fall of the objects to little more than a yard, 

 abbreviated the time for critical observation to a small 

 fraction of a second, and precluded the use of micromet- 

 ric instruments. Not satisfied with all this, he exhausted 

 the tube of its air and thereby made doubly sure of baf- 

 fling the vision. If this mode of getting rid of unpala- 

 table truths is sound and logical, why not abolish the 

 compound microscope, as a means of destroying those 

 disease germs of whose existence we should otherwise 

 be blissfully ignorant ? 



THE AUTHOR'S THEORY 



As an alternative theory of the tides I submit the 

 following : 



In the course of her annual journeys around the sun 

 the earth is compelled to change her angular position 



