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
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
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—