It was in connection with this subject of gravitation that one of the most well-meaning of the paradoxists--the late Mr. James Reddie--came under Professor De Morgan's criticism. Mr. Reddie was something more than well-meaning. He was earnestly desirous of advancing the interests of science, as well as of defending religion from what he mistakenly supposed to be the dangerous teachings of the Newtonians. He founded for these purposes the Victoria Institute, of which society he was the secretary from the time of its institution until his decease, some years since; and, probably, many who declined to join that society because of the Anti-Newtonian proclivities of its secretary, were unaware that to that secretary the institute owed its existence. It so chanced that I had myself a good deal of correspondence with Mr. Reddie (who was, however, personally unknown to me). This correspondence served to throw quite a new light on the mental habitudes and ways of thinking of the honest paradoxist. I believe that Professor De Morgan hardly gave Mr. Reddie credit for the perfect honesty which he really possessed. It may have been that a clear reasoner like De Morgan could hardly (despite his wide experience) appreciate the confusion of mind which is the normal characteristic of the paradoxist. But certainly the very candid way in which Mr. Reddie admitted, in the correspondence above named, that he had not known some facts and had misunderstood others, afforded to my mind the most satisfactory proofs of his straightforwardness. It may be instructive to consider a few of those paradoxes of Mr. Reddie's which Professor De Morgan found chief occasion to pulverise. In a letter to the Astronomer-Royal Mr. Reddie announced that he was about to write 'a paper intended to be hereafter published, elaborating more minutely and discussing more rigidly than before the glaring fallacies, dating from the time of Newton, relating to the motion of the moon.' He proceeded to 'indicate the nature of the issues he intended to raise.' He had discovered that the moon does not, as a matter of fact, go round the earth at the rate of 2288 miles an hour, as astronomers say, but follows an undulatory path round the sun at a rate varying between 65,000 and 70,000 miles an hour; because, while the moon seems to go round the earth, the latter is travelling onwards at the rate of 67,500 miles an hour round the sun. Of course he was quite right in his facts, and quite wrong in his inferences; as the Astronomer-Royal pointed out in a brief letter, closing with the remark that, 'as a very closely occupied man,' Mr. Airy could 'not enter further into the matter.' But further Mr. Reddie persisted in going, though he received no more letters from Greenwich. His reply to Sir G. Airy contained, in fact, matter enough for a small pamphlet.