Page:History of the Royal Astronomical Society (1923).djvu/120

 9 8 HISTORY OF THE [1840-50 a more than usually difficult question were submitted to the Society, of the very kind which the Society had peculiarly delegated to the Council, even in the ordinary and easier cases." Accordingly no such proposal emanated from the Council, but at the meeting several amendments were proposed, of different complexions. A Special General Meeting was assembled the following month to consider the suspension of the Bye-law ; but this meeting decided to accept the advice of the Council and to proceed no further in the matter. The Council remembers with great satisfaction the amiable tone in which the above differences, more serious than any which had ever prevailed in the Society, were discussed at the meetings ; and they feel assured that in no public body can the prospect of dis- union arising out of divided deliberation be smaller than in ours. It is not now very easy to make out what views were held by what members. Perhaps it may be taken that every possible course found its advocate. It is certain that some of the sternest upholders of Le Verrier as against Adams were found in our own Society and in these islands. The point upon which stress was laid, that Adams had failed to make a technical " publication " of his results, and was thereby disentitled to any share in the credit of the discovery, will strike most people, on review, as extraordinarily narrow and pedantic, even if not wholly a misdirection. The words of Herschel in 1849 upon another occasion, when Bond and Lassell simultaneously had discovered Hyperion from opposite sides of the Atlantic, are worth attention. They can hardly fail to have reference to the earlier difficult case of Neptune. " If I am right in the principle that discovery consists in the certain knowledge of a new fact or a new truth, a knowledge grounded upon positive and tangible evidence, as distinct from bare suspicion or surmise that such a fact exists, or that such a proposition is true if I am right in assigning as the moment of discovery that moment when the discoverer is first enabled to say to himself, as to a bystander, 4 1 am sure that such is the fact, and I am sure of it, for such and such reasons,' reasons subsequently acquiesced in as valid ones when the discovery comes to be known and acknow- ledged, if I say, I am right in this principle (and I can really find no better)," and so forth. This may not be the easiest principle to follow in making an award according to law, but there is little doubt that it will accord with subsequent settled opinion of what is just. Testimonials, But the Society was not yet out of the wood. In the course of the year, no facts being in dispute, opinion settled down to a pretty definite form, from which it has not since much varied. But when November came round, something required to