CHAPTER II
A CONTRAST OF FORMER AND
PRESENT ATTITUDES TOWARDS
SCIENTIFIC ACHIEVEMENTS
Astronomers in all ages have sought to calculate the distances of these remote orbs from the sun and from one another, their dimensions, their periods of rotation and revolution, etc.; and in spite of the facts that during the respective ages in which they lived the science of astronomy was comparatively in its infancy and the equipments for performing such tasks were very simple, those pioneers of science were able to make estimates approximately correct. But the full and perfect confidence of the common people, in the ability, the accuracy, and the truthfulness of the forerunners in scientific speculations has not always existed. And even many of the contemporaries of those progressive leaders, who were learned men and women engaged at high pursuits, and who were almost or quite the intellectual peers of those earlier astronomers, discredited the truths set forth by them in their publications, doubted their sincerity, and even censured them for indulging in what the world at large then termed folly.
In some of the more enlightened countries of Europe this general lack of confidence gave rise to severe legislation against the publishing of any opinion, theory or truth relative to the distances, the dimensions, or the motions of the heavenly bodies, unless the content of such publication was strongly supported by the solid foundation of evidence. For offending against said law some of the world’s greatest thinkers, even in the time of Galileo and Copernicus, were arraigned before the courts of justice, tried, and condemned. After the sentence to punishment had been uttered, the offender in such cases was sometimes given the option of regaining his liberty by swearing on bended knees that his publication was willfully and knowingly false, or of paying the penalty of violated law, which was either long confinement in a dungeon, or death.
At the present time no such law as the one referred to in the foregoing paragraph exists in any of the civilized countries on the face of the globe to hamper thought and to retard scientific progress. The absence of such restrictions from the statute books of all countries is the strongest and best evidence that the people of every race and nationality are more open to conviction than they were in former times and therefore becoming more thoroughly educated, wiser, and better. I am truly glad that I live in such an age,– an era when the subjects of all countries may freely use and enjoy such a privilege as the freedom of speech and of the press, at least in all matters pertaining to scientific subjects and speculations, without placing their lives in jeopardy.
Before any craft heavier than air was ever propelled and guided through the aerial regions above us, the Wrights declared that it was a matter of only a short time when airships would be more numerous than the ships upon the sea; and at the time when wireless telegraphy was talked of by a few merely as a possibility and thought of by the masses of the people as nothing short of wild speculation, Marconi asserted that within the short period of five years we would be receiving messages from ten thousand miles away without any apparent medium of communication.
Plate 4. Projections of a Few Cometary Orbits on the Plane of the Ecliptic
Before these blossoms developed and ripened into fruits all the enlightened countries of both hemispheres were dickering for the products. The world did not wait to see the undisguised expositions of these three great modem geniuses come true, but at once had faith in their magic utterances and touch and received their explicit assertions without question or criticism. These are only two of many examples that might be given to illustrate or to prove the unbounded faith and confidence that the people everywhere now have in the pioneers of science and art.
Most competent authorities are now urging upon us the prediction that fifty years hence our means of locomotion will be such that we can with perfect comfort and a reasonable degree of safety cross the continent from New York City to San Francisco within the limits of eight or ten hours. Perhaps no one doubts for one moment the possibility nor even the probability of such facilities in the way of travel within this comparatively short time. During the last half century such immense strides have been made in the sciences and the arts that now scarcely anything seems unreasonable to the higher grades of intelligence.
And now if the most progressive men and women of the age, and the ablest scholars and the profoundest thinkers found today among scientists and inventive geniuses of the highest order were to dare assert that it is not only possible but very highly probable that within a comparatively short time a means will be invented by which we can make safe and rapid transits from one heavenly body to another, would you not look forward to such an accomplishment with expectant attention and a high degree of unwavering faith ? Why certainly you would. To do otherwise would be to get entirely out of harmony with the general upward trend of thought which characterizes the people of this, the most progressive age in the world’s history.
Now without the slightest fear of placing his life in jeopardy, and in the confident hope and the belief that the truth of his story will readily be accepted by every grade of intelligence and with the same high degree of confidence with which they now receive the theories, the predictions, and the assertions of the progressive leaders along every line of thought, the writer takes pleasure in publishing to the world for the first time the startling fact that an ethereal ship has already been invented and constructed, which has the wonderful power of neutralizing the force of gravitation and of propelling itself at a high rate of speed through the free space of the heavens. And he takes pleasure in stating further that it has been his pleasure and fortune to have been a member of the first and only party to make in this craft a transit from the earth a safe and speedy return.
Plate 5. A Meteor Trail.