Now the average reader of these two criticisms, taking account of the high official position of both writers, would accept their statements of the case as being demonstrated facts, requiring no qualification whatever, and would conclude that my whole argument had been thereby rendered worthless, and all that I founded upon it a fantastic dream. But if, on the other hand, I can show that their stated facts as to the sun's motion are by no means demonstrated, because founded upon assumptions which may be quite erroneous; and further, that if the facts should turn out to be substantially correct, they have both omitted to state well-known and admitted qualifications which render the conclusions they derive from the facts very doubtful, then the average reader will learn the valuable lesson that official advocacy, whether in medicine, law, or science is never to be accepted till the other side of the case has been heard. Let us see, therefore, what the facts really are. Professor Simon Newcomb calculates that, if there are one hundred million stars in the stellar universe each five times the mass of our sun, and spread over a space which light would require thirty thousand years to cross, then any mass traversing such a system with a velocity of more than twenty-five miles a second, would fly off into infinite space never to return. Now as there are many stars which have, apparently, very much more than this velocity, it would follow that the visible universe is unstable. It also implies that these great velocities were not acquired in the system itself, but that the bodies which possess them must have entered it from without, thus requiring other universes as the feeders of our universe.