ecially bitter manner of the unfavourable
comments which men of science had made upon his views in private letters
addressed to him in reply to his communications.

There is something melancholy even in what is most ridiculous in cases
of this sort. The simplicity which supposes that considerations so
obvious as those adduced could escape the scrutiny, not of Newton only,
but of all who have followed in the same track during two centuries, is
certainly stupendous; nor can one fail to smile at seeing a difficulty,
such as might naturally suggest itself to a beginner, and such as
half-a-dozen words from an expert would clear up, regarded gravely as a
discovery calculated to make its author famous for all time. Yet, when
one considers the probable consequences of the blunder to the unhappy
enthusiast, and perchance to his family, it is difficult not to feel a
sense of pity, quite apart from that pity allied to contempt which is
excited by his mistake. A few words added to the account of Newton's
theory, which the paradoxist had probably read in some astronomical
treatise, would have prevented all this mischief. Indeed, this
difficulty, which, as we have said, is a natural one, should be dealt
with and removed in any account of the planetary system intended for
beginners. The simple statement that the outer planets move more slowly
than the inner, and so _require_ a smaller force to keep them in their
course, would have sufficed, not, perhaps, altogether to remove the
difficulty, but to show the beginner where the explanation was to be
looked for.

It was in connection with this subject of gravitation that one of the
most well-meaning of the paradoxists--the late Mr. James Reddie--came
under Professor De Morgan's criticism. Mr. Reddie was something more
than well-meaning. He was earnestly desirous of advancing the interests
of science, as well as of defending religion from what he mistakenly
supposed to be the dangerous teachings of the Newtonians. He founded for
these purposes the Victoria Institute, of which society he was the
secretary from the time of its institution until his decease, some years
since; and, probably, many who declined to join that society because of
the Anti-Newtonian proclivities of its secretary, were unaware that to
that secretary the institute owed its existence.

It so chanced that I had myself a good deal of correspondence with Mr.
Reddie (who was, however, personally unknown to me). This corre