THE PRIME RESULTANT 101 



the poles, even going so far as specifically to liken it to 

 the "behavior of water in a wash-bowl while escaping 

 through a central vent. ' ' 



Now, if you will, slip on your wings of imagination 

 and fly with me to a point in the heavens where we can 

 obtain a good bird's eye view of our solar system spread 

 broadside below us. But let us not view it, as custom- 

 arily, from the north, but from the south side of the 

 ecliptic, for there is a good reason which shall presently 

 appear. Note the enormous size of the system. The sun 

 in the focus is himself so huge that from his center to his 

 circumference is almost 200,000 miles greater than from 

 the earth to the moon. Yet that immense body, if viewed 

 from Neptune, his outermost planet, 2,800,000,000 miles 

 away, would barely show a disc to the naked eye. Suppose 

 Uranus, whose distance is 1,800,000,000 miles, to be 

 directly opposite Neptune, on the other side of the sun, 

 and then imagine a giant sun big enough to fill in the gap 

 from one planet to the other. Retire now in spirit to the 

 distance of the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, some thirty 

 million, million miles away, then will this giant sun of our 

 imagination appear to you almost exactly of the same size 

 as would the real sun to an inhabitant of Neptune ! 



We see then that, scattered as the members of our 

 system may be, and minute as they are as compared with 

 their separating distances, they are nevertheless next 

 door neighbors when contrasted with the stars in general. 

 It is because of this relative isolation that they are en- 

 enabled, or rather compelled, to organize themselves auto- 

 matically into a family or unit, in deference to the coer- 

 cion of the cencentrated stellar attractions. 



Universal gravitation I accept as an objective reality 

 in all its plenary implication. If this force extends from 

 the earth to the moon, from both of them to the sun, from 

 the sun to Neptune, without sagging of the law of the in- 

 verse square, I contend that there remains no logical 

 ground for doubting that it extends with unimpaired vir- 

 tue throughout the visible universe to its outermost con- 

 fines. If in this opinion I am in error, then the adjective 



