Page:A budget of paradoxes (IA cu31924103990507).pdf/493

 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:—

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:—

Mr. Reddie must have been very well satisfied in his own mind before he ventured such a challenge, with an answer from me