332 THE UTOPIAN COMMUNIST
had been referred. The former had completely rejected his major
contention that phenomena heretofore explained by the motion
of light were due to parallax. This time the director tactfully sug
gested that the amateur astronomer direct his talents "to some less
cultivated field of science" in which his labors might produce
"more valuable results." Weitling remained unconvinced, how
ever, and the correspondence with the Smithsonian Institution
continued until 1866. Two of Weitling's papers are preserved in
the archives of the Institution. One of the letters referred to the
invention of an instrument "for indicating the mean changes of
different astronomical elements," which the Institution tactfully
declared to be outside its proper sphere of interest.
In Weitling's files there were copies of letters dated 1859 and
later, to Professor Anton Schrötter, secretary of the academy in
Vienna; to Professor O. G. Ehrenberg of Berlin, who courteously
acknowledged the material but would not risk a judgment on it;
to the secretary of the institution in Paris, to whom Weitling had
explained his theories on twelve large sheets and in lucid French;
and to the director of the United States Naval Observatory. An
undated letter from a French correspondent referred to Weitling's
reputation abroad as a well-known communist and urged a return
of the "veteran of the economic war of liberation" to the scenes of
his earlier triumphs but declined to find financial help or a pub
lisher for his astronomical papers. In 1867, Otto Wigand, a pub
lisher in Leipzig, suggested that Weitling's demands for royalties
from his scientific works were too high to warrant undertaking
such an uncertain proposition.
Rebuffed on all sides, Weitling nevertheless continued his work
with a persistence that is amazing. In 1864, he was in especially
high spirits because an article in the Scientific American on electric
waves had taught him the new terms, cathode and anode. Two
years later, he was engaged in building what he called a "mechani
cal Celeste" to illustrate the true motions of sun and earth. Despite
constant discouragements from those he thought should help him
to make his discoveries known to the world, despite the total lack