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We can set three boats in a line on the water, as at A, B, and C, (Fig. 7). Then, if equal masts are placed in these boats, and we place a telescope, as shown, so that when we look through it we see the tops of the masts of A and C, we find the top of the mast B is above the line of sight. Now, here is the point: Mr. Proctor either knows or he ought to know that we shall NOT find anything of the sort! If he has ever tried the experiment, he knows that the three masts will range in a straight line, just as common sense tells us they will. If he has not tried the experiment, he should have tried it, or have paid attention to the details of experiments by those who have tried similar ones a score of times and again. Mr. Proctor may take either horn of the dilemma he pleases: he is just as wrong as a man can be, either way. He mentions no names, but he says:
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A person had written a book, in which he said that he had tried such an experiment as the above, and had found that the surface of the water was not curved. That person was
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Parallax, the founder of the Zetetic Philosophy. He continues:
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Another person seems to have believed the first, and became so certain that the Earth is flat as to wager a large sum of money that if three boats were placed as in Fig. 7, the middle one would not be above the line joining the two others. That person was John Hampden. And, says Mr. Proctor,
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Unfortunately for him, some one who had more sense agreed to take his wager, and, of course, won his money. Now, the
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was Mr. Wallace. And, says Proctor, in continuation:
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He [Hampden?] was rather angry; and it is a strange thing that he was not angry with himself for being so foolish, or with the person who said he had tried the experiment (and so led him astray), but with the person who had won his money! Here, then, we see that Mr. Proctor knows better than to say that the experiments conducted by
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Parallax were things of the imagination only, or that a wrong account had been given of them; and it would be well if he knew better than to try to make his readers believe that either one or the other of these things is the fact: But, there is the Old Bedford Canal now; and there are ten thousand places where the experiment may be tried! Who, then, are the
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people: those who