80 FROM NEBULA TO NEBULA 



Newton supposed that by argumentatively eliminat- 

 ing the resistance of the ether, postulating it to have ex- 

 istence but no body, he overcame the only obstacle to 

 his inertial hypothesis. In this he was culpably in error. 

 Take two pails precisely alike and provided with lids. 

 Fill one with sand, letting the other go empty, and carry 

 them together for a furlong. Being exactly alike in size, 

 they are, of course, equally resisted by the atmosphere. 

 Which arm, however, will tire first, that carrying the full 

 pail, or the other one? The former, by all means ! The 

 moon, too, lias a load resistance to overcome, besides hav- 

 ing to buffet the medium it traverses. We shall presently 

 find that this load amounts to the steady downward pull 

 of 240 millions of millions of horses, more than a million 

 times greater than the etheric resistance to the moon 

 would amount to were that medium even as dense as our 

 atmosphere at sea level. Talk about straining at gnats 

 and swallowing camels ! Eeturning again to the pails ; 

 would you say that by running the furlong instead of 

 walking it, you would lessen the work done proportion- 

 ally? Certainly not, and neither can the imaginary im- 

 pulse that fired the moon on her course relieve her of 

 the task of carrying her own dead weight. You cannot 

 sophistrize gravity out of existence. To support the 

 moon during the 29.5 days of her monthly journey from 

 apogee to apogee and bring her back again to the same alti- 

 tude, she must from some genuine source not from 

 empty imagination or word-juggling draw just as much 

 lifting power as would be required to counteract the 

 earth's gravitation did she possess no initial tangential 

 translation whatever. 



Have you, my reader, any adequate idea of the elastic 

 strength of the earth's attraction upon the moon? Do 

 you realize that, unlike a rubber band, gravitational at- 

 traction never rots or wears out, never relaxes, and, 

 moreover, even increases its tension the closer the bodies 

 are brought together? It is not like a strand of twine, 

 or a ship's cable, or a dog's tether, that remains in a state 

 of laxity until called into play only when stretched to full 



