known practically what it is to be “ a scientific heretic,” 
and bow it fares with any who will venture to throw doubt 
upon the truth of Universal Gravitation, or to question what 
is supposed to be proved in the Principia. So far back as 
1842, when I had gone but partially into the whole subject, 
and knew not what scientific prejudice was ; when I fancied 
that all men of science were lovers of truth, and all able to 
justify their beliefs; I ventured to send two brief papers to 
the Royal Societies of London and Edinburgh, containing 
objections to the demonstrations of the first and second pro- 
positions of the Principia. That sent to the London Society 
was never acknowledged ; the other was returned from Edin- 
burgh at the end of six months as “ not suitable for being 
read before the Society,” with a civil apology for the 
tardiness of this reply. After an interval of twenty years, 
early in 1862, I published a small book on the subject,* 
including those objections elaborated, along with many others, 
and with counter- demonstrations ; and in the same year I 
ventured to submit a Paperf to Section A of the British 
Association for the Advancement of Science, when it met 
at Cambridge, which was “ declined with thanks,” because 
Newton^s theory was attacked in it. In 1863, I sent another 
Paper to Section A of the British Association at Newcastle, 
which was not even acknowledged, and which I afterwards 
published. J And lastly, the following year I tried in vain at 
Bath to obtain a hearing before the British Association for 
another Paper, which has remained till now in MS., and which 
was for some time in the hands of our Yice-President, 
Mr. Mitchell. The Cambridge paper alone was directly an 
attack upon the reasoning* in the first section, and the 
demonstration of the first proposition of the second section, 
of the Principia ; the Newcastle paper was chiefly an ex- 
posure of the astronomical contradictions arising from the 
first HerscheTs theory of solar motion in space, a conception 
with which neither Copernicus nor Newton had anything 
whatever to do; and the Bath paper was on the motion of 
the moon, to show that its actual path and the physical laws 
that must regulate its motion, according to the Copernico- 
Nevvtonian hypothesis, are totally different from the hypo- 
thetical suppositions employed in solving the famous mathe- 
matical problem of the three bodies, in which — strange 
as it may appear — not only is the sun, but also the earth, 
regarded as at rest, with the moon revolving round it in an 
* Vis Inertia Victa ; or, Fallacies affecting Science. (Load., Hardwicke.) 
t Afterwards published with the title — The Mechanics of the Heavens. 
I With the title, Victoria Toto Ccelo ; or, Modern Astronomy liccast. 
