The Monmouth inquirer. [volume] (Freehold, N.J.) 1865-1933, 1924-09-04
CHANGING THE EARTH.

told that the earth was round like an
orange, and we were foolish enough
to believe it. Moreover, we have been
passing this intelligence along to the
present generation, in the SNUG
confidence that we were doing the
right thing. But now comes Professor
q. H. Lowe, Of the Royal Society,
and makes us ashamed of ourselves.
He says that our planet is not round
like an orange or like ball or any
thing else as homely as that. On the
contrary, he declares what in fact
everybody ought to have known long
ago, that "the atmosphere Is an ell
Iipsoid with three unequal axes, hay
ing its surface deformed according to
the formula for certain spherical har-
monte of the third degree, and dis
placed as a whole relatively to the
geoid, in the direction toward south
eastern Europe"
And, so, bang goes another one OF
our illusionsi And shall we be any
the more healthy for 1t? Let us at
least hope so, for the sake Of accept
ing the explosion with philosophic
politeness. There is no task more
difficult of graceful accomplishment
than to permit ourselves to be rob-
bed of a cherished illusion. It is far
more to our instincts to whack the
head of rising Copernicus or Calico
than to shake his hand. Turning back
the leaves of our mortal record, we
discover that our happiest years, our
happiest moments, have been those In
which we basked in the rose-light OF
Illusions The earth has never again
been quite so near to heaven as in
the days when we knew that giants
and fairies and god-like heroes shared
the world with us. And there has been
no Christmas-no real Christmas
since the day that some well-mean-
ing Puritan took us kindly by the
hand and defined Santa Claus as
slender, black-whiskered gentleman
known to the family as papa"
Nor are we even now any better
protected against the robbery of our
maturer beliefs. Scarcely a day pas
ses that some highwayman of science
or history or travel does not hold US
up and demand some article of faith.
Would you rest undisturbed in the
possession of your own satisfying
wisdom, you must hide in the woods.
If you find comfort in the knowledge
that the sun Is an incandesccnt body
and that you sleep better for taking
o glass of milk at bedtime, keep your
door tight shut upon these things or
somebody will take them from you.
II you worship Paul or Perieles or
Emerson or Roosevelt, you may not
venture forth lest you collide with
Sadducee who will snuff the halo from
your saint or kick the pedestal from
under your beloved hero.
And what is given us to compensate
for our lost illusions? Alas, we do
not know! We arc told 1t Is Truth;
but scarcely do we adjust ourselves
to a new truth, when behold! 1t. too.
becomes a myth. Could we have some
celestial warranty that the earth will
remain for all future time as now
defined by Professor Lowe, we might
take comfort. But in the history of
mankind it has already been square
like a checker-board, circular like
pancake, and round like an orange,
and now it is ellipsoidal like nobody
knows what. So, also, at one time it
was hollow and foated on water;
again. 1t was filled with fire, and spun
in a vacuum; while at present 1t Is
q solid rock suspended in ether; and
probably before our grandchildren
die it will be something else. A few
centuries past is was composed Of
four elements; by and by it was COM
posed of sixty or seventy, and now
it is whispered that 1t is composed
of only one. Once our primal earthly
parents were pair Of respectable
mortals; later on they were pair
of disreputable apes, and at present
there are signs of another shuttle.
If these changes shall proceed to
infnity, why Is not one illusion as
worthy as another? Perhaps 1t is.
At all events, who shall say that we
are any better or any happier or any
nearer to God because the earth is
now an ellipsoid with three unequal
axes, instead of a stationay disk,
such as Solomon beheld, with the sun
moving across the ARMAMENT
Clifford Howard in Lippincotts.