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When the high excentricity passed away the glacial epoch also passed away in the Temperate zone; but it persists in the Arctic zone, where during the Miocene there were mild climates, and this is due to the persistence of the changed geographical conditions. The present Arctic climate is itself a comparatively new and abnormal state of things due to geographical modification.
To us, however, at present, neither the morality nor the present mental excentricity of the capitalist is so material as the possibility of his acquiring flexibility under pressure, for it would seem to be almost mathematically demonstrable that he will, in the near future, be subjected to a pressure under which he must develop flexibility or be eliminated.
In your remark as to the doubtfulness of paucity of fossils being due to coldness of water, I think you overlook that I am speaking only of waters in the latitude of the Alps, in Miocene and Eocene times, when icebergs and glaciers temporarily descended into an otherwise warm sea; my theory being that there was no glacial epoch at that time, but merely a local and temporary descent of the snow-line and glaciers owing to high excentricity and winter in aphelion.
These are Kepler's first and second Laws though not discovered in that order, and it was at once clear that Ptolemy's "bisection of the excentricity" simply amounted to the fact that the centre of an ellipse bisects the distance between the foci, the sun being in one focus and the angular velocity being uniform about the empty focus.
Before making a fresh start he looked for some simplification of the labour; and determined to adopt Ptolemy's assumption known as the principle of the bisection of the excentricity. A marked improvement in residuals was the result of this step, proving, so far, the correctness of Ptolemy's principle, but there still remained discordances amounting to eight minutes of arc.
All that is remarkable about the modern capitalist is the excess of his excentricity, or his deviation from that resultant of forces to which he must conform.
I cannot see the difficulty about the cessation of the glacial period. Between the Miocene and the Pleistocene periods geographical changes occurred which rendered a true glacial period possible with high excentricity.
He found it best to assume the centre of distance half-way between the centre of the earth and the excentric, thus "bisecting the excentricity". Even this did not fit in the case of Mercury, and in general the agreement between theory and observation was spoilt by the necessity of making all the orbital planes pass through the centre of the earth, instead of the sun, thus making a good accordance practically impossible.
Other stages have grafted themselves upon this stage, but have never succeeded in displacing it. Let us consider this common-sense stage first, as if it might be final. In practical talk, a man's common sense means his good judgment, his freedom from excentricity, his GUMPTION, to use the vernacular word.
Without this actual measurement we might have thought that the excentricity was the effect of the projection of the circles on the apparent concavity of the sky. If the situation of our house at Cumana was highly favourable for the observation of the stars and meteorological phenomena, it obliged us to be sometimes the witnesses of painful scenes during the day.
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