three centuries, for 291 years, you have repeated his words like
so many parrots, instead of using the key he gave you to unlock
the mysteries of the universe. A corollary of his law is that
the planets move in their orbits because they are impelled
thereto between the two forces, and move in a mean curve between
them; but it was not until 1896 that you discovered that the
mean between two forces is always a curve and never a straight
line. You have not a text book in a school today that does not
repeat this fundamental and absurd error--which you have known
for three centuries to be an error--that the motion resulting
from a mean between forces is "in a straight line." The curves
resulting here are not to be measured easily, and are so large
that small segments appear straight lines; and it was not until
Carpenter demonstrated it mathematically that any one could
believe it true.

"There are two great forces in this universe. Your grandfathers
called them Centripetal and Centrifugal forces; your fathers
called them Gravity and Apergy, names which still cling to them;
and you call them Attraction and Repulsion.

"It was Kepler, not Newton, who discovered that Attraction or
Gravity was in inverse proportion to the square of the distance.

"You know the meaning of this mystic phrase, 'as the squares of
the distance.' You understand that it means the attraction at
two feet is only one-fourth the attraction at one foot; at four
feet only one-sixteenth; at eight feet, only one sixty-fourth.

"But who knows or cares for Kepler's great law of Repulsion, or