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, 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, Nov. 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, 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 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
