At p. 183 I mentioned Mr. Reddie,[650] the author of _Vis Inertiae Victa_
and of _Victoria toto coelo_,[651] which last is not {345} an address to
the whole heaven, either from a Roman Goddess or a British Queen, whatever
a scholar may suppose. Between these Mr. Reddie has published _The
Mechanics of the Heavens_, 8vo, 1862: this I never saw until he sent it to
me, with an invitation to notice it, he very well knowing that it would
catch. His speculations do battle with common notions of mathematics and of
mechanics, which, to use a feminine idiom, he blasphemes so you can't
think! and I suspect that if you do not blaspheme them too, _you_ can't
think. He appeals to the "truly scientific," and would be glad to have
readers who have read what he controverts, i.e., Newton's _Principia_: I
wish he may get them; I mean I hope he may obtain them. To none but these
would an account of his speculations be intelligible: I accordingly
disposed of him in a very short paragraph of description. Now many
paradoxers desire notice, even though it be disparaging. I have letters
from more than one--besides what have been sent to the Editor of the
_Athenaeum_--complaining that they are not laughed at; although they deserve
it, they tell me, as much as some whom I have inserted. Mr. Reddie informs
me that I have not said a single word against his books, though I have
given nearly a column to sixteen-string arithmetic, and as much to
animalcule universes. What need to say anything to readers of Newton
against a book from which I quoted that revolution by gravitation is
_demonstrably_ impossible? It would be as useless as evidence against a man
who has pleaded guilty. Mr. Reddie derisively thanks me for "small
mercies"; he wrote me private letters; he published them, and more, in the
_Correspondent_. He gave me, _pro viribus suis_,[652] such a dressing you
can't think, both for my Budget non-notice, and for reviews which he
assumed me to have written. He outlawed himself by declaring
(_Correspondent_, Nov. 11, 1856) that I--in a review--had made a quotation
which was "garbled, evidently on purpose {346} to make it appear that" he
"was advocating solely a geocentric hypothesis, which is not true." In
fact, he did his best to get larger "mercy." And he shall have it; and at a
length which shall content him, unless his mecometer be an insatiable
apparatus. But I fear that in other respects I shall no more satisfy him
than the Irish drummer satisfied the poor culprit when, after several times
changing the direction of the stroke at earnest entreaty, he was at last
provoked to call out, "Bad cess to ye, ye spalpeen! strike where one will,
there's no _plasing_ ye!"
Mr. Reddie attaches much force to Berkeley's[653] old arguments against the
doctrine of fluxions, and advances objections to Newton's second section,
which he takes to be new. To me they appear "such as have been often made,"
to copy a description given in a review: though I have no doubt Mr. Reddie
got them out of himself. But the whole matter comes to this: Mr. Reddie
challenged answer, especially from the British Association, and got none.
He presumes that this is because he is right, and cannot be answered: the
Association is willing to risk itself upon the counter-notion that he is
wrong, and need not be answered; because so wrong that none who could
understand an answer would be likely to want one.
Mr. Reddie demands my attention to a point which had already particularly
struck me, as giving the means of showing to _all_ readers the kind of
confusion into which paradoxers are apt to fall, in spite of the clearest
instruction. It is a very honest blunder, and requires notice: it may
otherwise mislead some, who may suppose that no one able to read could be
mistaken about so simple a matter, {347} let him be ever so wrong about
Newton. According to his own mis-statement, in less than five months he
made the Astronomer Royal abandon the theory of the solar motion in space.
The announcement is made in August, 1865, as follows: the italics are not
mine:
"The third (_Victoria ..._), although only published in September,
1863, has already had its triumph. _It is the book that forced the
Astronomer Royal of England, after publicly teaching the contrary for
years, to come to the conclusion, "strange as it may appear," that "the
whole question of solar motion in space is at the present time in doubt
and abeyance."_ This admission is made in the Annual Report of the
Council of the Royal Astronomical Society, published in the Society's
_Monthly Notices_ for February, 1864."
It is added that solar motion is "full of self-contradiction, which "the
astronomers" simply overlooked, but which they dare not now deny after
being once pointed out."
The following is another of his accounts of the matter, given in the
_Correspondent_, No. 18, 1865:
"... You ought, when you came to put me in the 'Budget,' to have been
aware of the Report of the Council of the Royal Astronomical Society,
where it appears that Professor Airy,[654] with a better appreciation
of my demonstrations, had admitted--'strange,' say the Council, 'as it
may appear,'--that 'the whole question of solar motion in space [and
here Mr. Reddie omits some words] is now in _doubt and abeyance_.' You
were culpable as a public teacher of no little pretensions, if you were
'unaware' of this. If aware of it, you ought not to have suppressed
such an important testimony to my really having been 'very successful'
in drawing the teeth of the pegtops, though you thought them so firmly
fixed. And if you still suppress {348} it, in your Appendix, or when
you reprint your 'Budget,' you will then be guilty of a _suppressio
veri_, also of further injury to me, who have never injured you...."
Mr. Reddie must have been very well satisfied in his own mind before he
ventured such a challenge, with an answer from me looming in the distance.
The following is the passage of the Report of the Council, etc., from which
he quotes:
"And yet, strange to say, notwithstanding the near coincidence of all
the results of the before-mentioned independent methods of
investigation, the inevitable logical inference deduced by Mr. Airy is,
that the whole question of solar motion in space, _so far at least as
accounting for the proper motion of the stars is concerned_, [I have
put in italics the words omitted by Mr. Reddie] appears to remain at
this moment in doubt and abeyance."
Mr. Reddie has forked me, as he thinks, on a dilemma: if unaware, culpable
ignorance; if aware, suppressive intention. But the thing is a _trilemma_,
and the third horn, on which I elect to be placed, is surmounted by a
doubly-stuffed seat. First, Mr. Airy has not changed his opinion about the
_fact_ of solar motion in space, but only suspends it as to the sufficiency
of present means to give the amount and direction of the motion. Secondly,
all that is alluded to in the Astronomical Report was said and printed
before the Victoria proclamation appeared. So that the author, instead of
drawing the tooth of the Astronomer Royal's pegtop, has burnt his own
doll's nose.
William Herschel,[655] and after him about six other astronomers, had aimed
at determining, by the proper motions of the stars, the point of the
heavens towards which the solar system is moving: their results were
tolerably accordant. Mr. Airy, in 1859, proposed an improved method, and,
applying it to stars of large proper motion, produced {349} much the same
result as Herschel. Mr. E. Dunkin,[656] one of Mr. Airy's staff at
Greenwich, applied Mr. Airy's method to a very large number of stars, and
produced, again, nearly the same result as before. This paper was read to
the Astronomical Society in _March_, 1863, was printed in abstract in the
_Notice_ of that month, was printed in full in the volume then current, and
was referred to in the Annual Report of the Council in _February_, 1864,
under the name of "the Astronomer Royal's elaborate investigation, as
exhibited by Mr. Dunkin." Both Mr. Airy and Mr. Dunkin express grave doubts
as to the sufficiency of the data: and, regarding the coincidence of all
the results as highly curious, feel it necessary to wait for calculations
made on better data. The report of the Council states these doubts. Mr.
Reddie, who only published in _September_, 1863, happened to see the Report
of February, 1864, assumes that the doubts were then first expressed, and
declares that his book of September had the triumph of forcing the
Astronomer Royal to abandon the _fact_ of motion of the solar system by the
February following. Had Mr. Reddie, when he saw that the Council were
avowedly describing a memoir presented some time before, taken the
precaution to find out _when_ that memoir was presented, he would perhaps
have seen that doubts of the results obtained, expressed by one astronomer
in March, 1863, and by another in 1859, could not have been due to his
publication of September, 1863. And any one else would have learnt that
neither astronomer doubts the _solar motion_, though both doubt the
sufficiency of present means to determine its _amount_ and _direction_.
This is implied in the omitted words, which Mr. Reddie--whose omission
would have been dishonest if he had seen their meaning--no doubt took for
pleonasm, superfluity, overmuchness. The rashness which pushed him headlong
{350} into the quillet that _his_ thunderbolt had stopped the chariot of
the Sun and knocked the Greenwich Phaeton off the box, is the same which
betrayed him into yet grander error--which deserves the full word,
_quidlibet_--about the _Principia_ of Newton. There has been no change of
opinion at all. When a person undertakes a long investigation, his opinion
is that, at a certain date, there is _prima facie_ ground for thinking a
sound result may be obtained. Should it happen that the investigation ends
in doubt upon the sufficiency of the grounds, the investigator is not put
in the wrong. He knew beforehand that there was an alternative: and he
takes the horn of the alternative indicated by his calculations. The two
sides of this case present an instructive contrast. Eight astronomers
produce nearly the same result, and yet the last two doubt the sufficiency
of their means: compare them with the what's-his-name who rushes in where
thing-em-bobs fear to tread.
I was not aware, until I had written what precedes, that Mr. Airy had given
a sufficient answer on the point. Mr. Reddie says (_Correspondent_, Jan.
20, 1866):
"I claim to have forced Professor Airy to give up the notion of 'solar
motion in space' altogether, for he admits it to be 'at present in
doubt and abeyance.' I first made that claim in a letter addressed to
the Astronomer Royal himself in June, 1864, and in replying, very
courteously, to other portions of my letter, he did not gainsay that
part of it."
Mr. Reddie is not ready at reading satire, or he never would have so missed
the meaning of the courteous reply on one point, and the total silence upon
another. Mr. Airy must be one of those peculiar persons who, when they do
not think an assertion worth notice, let it alone, without noticing it by a
notification of non-notice. He would never commit the bull of "Sir! I will
not say a word on that subject." He would put it thus, "Sir! I will only
say ten words on that subject,"--and, having thus said them, would {351}
proceed to something else. He assumed, as a matter of form, that Mr. Reddie
would draw the proper inference from his silence: and this because he did
not care whether or no the assumption was correct.
The _Mechanics of the Heavens_, which Mr. Reddie sends to be noticed, shall
be noticed, so far as an extract goes:
"My connection with this subject is, indeed, very simply explained. In
endeavoring to understand the laws of physical astronomy as generally
taught, I happened to entertain some doubt whether gravitating bodies could
revolve, and having afterwards imbibed some vague idea that the laws of the
universe were chemical and physical rather than mechanical, and somehow
connected with electricity and magnetism as opposing correlative
forces--most probably suggested to my mind, as to many others, by the
transcendent discoveries made in electro-magnetism by Professor
Faraday[657]--my former doubts about gravitation were revived, and I was
led very naturally to try and discover whether a gravitating body really
could revolve; and I became convinced it could not, before I had ever
presumed to look into the demonstrations of the _Principia_."
This is enough against the book, without a word from me: I insert it only
to show those who know the subject what manner of writer Mr. Reddie is. It
is clear that "presumed" is a slip of the pen; it should have been
_condescended_.
Mr. Reddie represents me as dreaming over paltry paradoxes. He is right;
many of my paradoxes are paltry: he is wrong; I am wide awake to them. A
single moth, beetle, or butterfly, may be a paltry thing; but when a
cabinet is arranged by genus and species, we then begin to admire the {352}
infinite variety of a system constructed on a wonderful sameness of leading
characteristics. And why should paradoxes be denied that collective
importance, paltry as many of them may individually be, which is accorded
to moths, beetles, or butterflies? Mr. Reddie himself sees that "there is a
method in" my "mode of dealing with paradoxes." I hope I have atoned for
the scantiness of my former article, and put the demonstrated impossibility
of gravitation on that level with Hubongramillposanfy arithmetic and
inhabited atoms which the demonstrator--not quite without reason--claims
for it.
In the Introduction to a collected edition of the three works, Mr. Reddie
describes his _Mechanism of the Heavens_, from which I have just quoted,
as--
"a public challenge offered to the British Association and the
mathematicians at Cambridge, in August, 1862, calling upon them to point to
a single demonstration in the _Principia_ or elsewhere, which even attempts
to prove that Universal Gravitation is possible, or to show that a
gravitating body could possibly revolve about a center of attraction. The
challenge was not accepted, and never will be. No such demonstration
exists. And the public must judge for themselves as to the character of a
so-called "certain science," which thus shrinks from rigid examination, and
dares not defend itself when publicly attacked: also of the character of
its teachers, who can be content to remain dumb under such circumstances."