106 FBOM NEBULA TO NEBULA 



ordial forms! No! There is only one explanation that 

 will serve, and that is, that the land which they and their 

 forebears have inhabited from paleolithic days on, has 

 not been the immovable platform for which they have all 

 along mistaken it, but a land raft that imperceptibly has 

 carried them through genial climates and latitudes to 

 where they now find themselves. 



Before proceeding to the more general problems of 

 the solar system, let me emphatically warn the reader 

 against inferring that the axis of the earth is pointing to 

 the center of the universe. I do not mean to convey any 

 such impression. An apple falling from the twig of the 

 tree where you may be sitting as you read this, and one 

 falling at the same time in the antipodes, though in ab- 

 solute space moving in opposite directions, are really 

 tending toward the same point, namely, the earth's center 

 of gravity. But no one would think of arguing from this 

 Jiat the earth's center is therefore the center of the uni- 

 7erse ! Mass for mass, proximate bodies dictate much 

 more strongly than those more remote the course a celes- 

 tial orb shall follow, and no two bodies are affected by the 

 sum of attractions to the same extent, or impelled toward 

 the same mathematical point in space. We know, 

 furthermore, that all of the stars are in rapid movement, 

 not only absolutely but relatively, for which reason the 

 goal or focus of the attracting powers is forever rhyth- 

 mically shifting about. When I assert, therefore, that 

 the earth is headed toward a Hank point in the heavens, 

 I mean that the merging of all the attractions focussed 

 upon her unite to coerce her movement, not only in a 

 definite line but also to and through a definite, unmarked, 

 mathematical point in that line. This line I call the 

 Prime Resultant, signifying thereby the stellar resultant 

 specifically pertaining to our solar system or any com- 

 ponent member of it; and the point I denominate by the 

 name Vertex. 



Let it be thoroughly understood, however, that al- 

 though, for the sake of convenience and brevity, I may 

 speak of both these entities as if they were fixed in loca- 



