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--far off or near. And then he forgets the fact! Mr. Proctor tells us, subsequently, that, if the traveller goes so far south that the North Star appears on the horizon,
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--if the Earth were a plane! Therefore, he argues,
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--but a curved one. Now, since it is nothing but common scientific trickery to bring forward, as an objection to stand in the way of a plane Earth, the non-appearance of a thing which has never been known to appear at all, it follows that, unless that which appears to be trickery were an accident, it was the only course open to the objector--to trick. (Mr. Proctor, in a letter to the
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English Mechanic for Oct. 20, 1871, boasts of having turned a recent convert to the Zetetic philosophy by telling him that his arguments were all very good, but that
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And Mr. Proctor concludes thus:
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He saw, indeed, that, in his faith in 'Parallax,' he had 'written himself down an ass.' ) Well, then: trickery or no trickery on the part of the objector, the objection is a counterfeit--a fraud--no valid objection at all; and it follows that the system which does not purge itself of these things is a rotten system, and the system which its advocates, with Mr. Proctor at their head, would crush if they could find a weapon to use--the Zetetic philosophy of
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Parallax
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Is water level, or is it not? was a question once asked of an astronomer.
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Practically, yes; theoretically, no, was the reply. Now, when theory does not harmonize with practice, the best thing to do is to drop the theory. (It is getting too late, now, to say
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So much the worse for the facts!