425 
[Mr. Eeddie here proceeded, with the aid of diagrams on the black board, 
to give illustrations in reply to Mr. Brooke. He afterwards continued] — 
I must, however, give a still better answer than this to Mr. Brooke’s argu- 
ments in defence of action and reaction this evening, by quoting from the 
5th edition of his own very valuable work on Natural Philosophy, where 
you will find he has said almost as much against it as I have myself. He 
says : — 
“ The Third Law of Motion has sometimes been expressed by the terms 
‘ action and reaction are equal, and in opposite directions ; ’ which have 
been abandoned, from the difficulty of assigning any definite meaning to the 
terms action and reaction ” (§ 200). 
Well, then, if this is Mr. Brooke’s own deliberate verdict, or rather testimony, 
against these terms, you need not be surprised if he failed to give us a very 
distinct explanation in defence of them now. Of course, as the preamble to 
my paper itself will show, I am quite aware that it was not to be expected 
that views so “ heretical ” and opposed to current opinion could be at once 
accepted : I was not even unprepared for a few jokes ; and I am really only 
sorry that my arguments have been so vaguely met. I beg to assure Mr. 
Brooke that I did not mean that the prejudices which I know are opposed to 
me, are not supposed to be based on conviction. In my paper I say they 
are not only supposed to rest upon the demonstrations of the Principia, 
but to have the “decision of time” — meaning experimental verification — in 
their favour. One, and the grand illustration of this, was the discovery of 
Neptune , . Well, as to this, the facts are on record in our Journal . # I appeal 
to those facts, when properly understood and weighed. I may also say as 
regards the rejection of my paper at Cambridge in 1862, that in my account 
I give the reason for its rejection given to me by Professor Clifton, Secretary 
to Section A, the first morning the Committee sat, when, perhaps, Mr. 
Brooke was not present. I published that account immediately, and it was 
never questioned by Professor Clifton, nor till now ; and I can only conclude 
that at this interval Mr. Brooke has forgotten what really occurred. As regards 
the transmission of light from the stars, and Mr. Brooke’s replies to Admiral 
Halsted’s very pertinent and important queries, I can only say I am con- 
tent to leave what has been said to-night, and what I have said in my paper, 
for further reflection. What I have said I know is startling ; but it is only 
so because, unfortunately, we have got accustomed to the much more 
startling ideas put forward to us in the name of science, which we have too 
credulously believed, but which I venture to denounce as merely and grossly 
absurd. With regard to Mr. Brooke’s illustrations of a watch going round 
while carried along, all that he said is perfectly true of motions when bodies 
are attached mechanically to one another. Mr. Brooke will find that fully 
admitted and dwelt upon in the paper “ On the Motion of the Moon,” 
appended to that which I read this evening. There I fairly meet Newton’s 
* Vol. II. pp, 69 — 71. 
