88 FROM NEBULA TO NEBULA 



into the air with this same initial velocity, and it will 

 rise to the exact height of sixteen feet, there stop short, 

 and, turning back, descend into your hand by the end of 

 the second second. Suppose that instead of merely pitch- 

 ing the bullet upward, you should elect to fire it horizon- 

 tally with a force capable of carrying it in a straight line 

 to a level higher by sixteen feet than the gun's mouth, 

 would you expect thereby to defeat gravity indefinitely, 

 or would you not rather look for the bullet to return to 

 the earth in a very brief space? What possible advan- 

 tage can there be in employing the projectile force hori- 

 zontally in preference to vertically, if the purpose be to 

 escape gravity or hold it at bay! They tell us that for 

 a bullet, fired vertically, to keep itself permanently aloof 

 from the earth, it must be propelled with the initial, 

 parabolic velocity of 6.9 miles a second, and that in that 

 case it can not stop short of infinity. Yet here is the 

 moon remaining perennially aloof, neither falling or re- 

 ceding ! To all these difficulties Newtonians are secretly 

 and poignantly alive, and this is why they have so reck- 

 lessly perverted our language by rhyming inertia with 

 persistent. 



I respectfully submit to the combined intelligence of 

 mankind that the cosmic phenomena demand a welling 

 source of centrifugal force to correspond with the ' ' fling- 

 ing motion ' ' in the experiment, and, further, that the fac- 

 tor of the resultant of the stellar attractions not only pre- 

 fiisely fulfils this need, but requires, in any case, to be 

 given a place in cosmological theory before the latter can 

 fairly be adjudged complete. Is it not the better part of 

 wisdom to utilize it constructively rather than forever to 

 cravenly dodge and ignore it? 



Another shallow artifice is the drawing of an analogy 

 between the motion of a pendulum and that of a planet in 

 its orbit, "the latter in one half of its orbit swinging in 

 toward the sun under the influence of gravitation, and in 

 the other half swinging away from the sun in consequence 

 of the increased velocity thus gained". Heretofore the 

 Newtonian policy has steadily been to foster this fallacy, 



