PART I (continued 2)

Three giants have appeared against us. Their hearts are bubbles. Their bones wilt. They are the limp Karyatides that uphold the phantom structure of Palaeo-astronomy. By what miracle, we asked, could foundation be built subsequently under a baseless thing. But three ghosts can fit in anywhere.

Sometimes astronomers cite the Foucault pendulum-experiment as “proof” of the motions of this earth. The circumstances of this demonstration are not easily made clear: consequently one of normal suspiciousness is likely to let it impose upon him. But my practical and commonplace treatment is to disregard what the experiment and its complexities are, and to enquire whether it works out or not. It does not. See Amer. Jour. Sci., 2-12-402; Eng. Mec., 93-293, 306; Astro. Reg., 2-265. Also we are told that experiments upon falling bodies have proved this earth’s rotation. I get so tired of demonstrating that there never has 55been any Evolution mentally, except as to ourselves, that, if I could, I’d be glad to say that these experiments work out beautifully. Maybe they do. See Proctor’s Old and New Astronomy, p. 229.

56

CHAPTER EIGHT

It is supposed that astronomic subjects and principles and methods can not be understood by the layman. I think this, myself. We shall take up some of the principles of astronomy, with the idea of expressing that of course they can not be understood by the unhypnotized any more than can the stories of Noah’s Ark and Jonah and the Whale be understood, but that our understanding, if we have any, will have some material for its exercises, just the same. The velocity of light is one of these principles. A great deal in the astronomic system depends upon this supposed velocity: determinations of distance, and amount of aberration depend. It will be our expression that these are ratios of impositions to mummeries, with such clownish products that formulas turn into antics, and we shall have scruples against taking up the subject at all, because we have much hard work to do, and we have qualms against stopping so often to amuse ourselves. But, then, sometimes in a more sentimental mood, I think that the pretty story of the velocity of light, and its “determination,” will some day be of legitimate service; be rhymed some day, and told to children, in future kindergartens, replacing the story of little Bo-peep, with the tale of a planet that lost its satellites and sometimes didn’t know where to find them, but that good magicians came along and formulated the indeterminable.

It was found by Roemer, a seventeenth-century astronomer, that, at times, the moons of Jupiter did not disappear behind him, and did not emerge from behind him, when they “should.” He found that as distance between this earth and Jupiter increased, the delays increased. He concluded that these delays represented times consumed by the light of the moons in traveling greater distances. He found, or supposed he found, that when this earth is farthest from Jupiter, light from a satellite is seen 22 minutes later than 57when nearest Jupiter. Given measurement of the distance between opposite points in the earth’s supposed orbit, and time consumed in traveling this distance—there you have the velocity of light.

I still say that it is a pretty story and should be rhymed; but we shall find that astronomers might as well try to formulate the gambols of the sheep of little Bo-peep, as to try to formulate anything depending upon the satellites of Jupiter.

In the Annals of Philosophy, 23-29, Col. Beaufoy writes that, upon Dec. 7, 1823, he looked for the emergence of Jupiter’s third satellite, at the time set down in the National Almanac: for two hours he looked, and did not see the satellite emerge. In Monthly Notices, 44-8, an astronomer writes that, upon the night of Oct. 15, 1883, one of the satellites of Jupiter was forty-six minutes late. A paper was read at the meeting of the British Astronomical Association, Feb. 8, 1907, upon a satellite that was twenty minutes late. In Telescopic Work, p. 191, W. F. Denning writes that, upon the night of Sept. 12, 1889, he and two other astronomers could not see satellite IV at all. See the Observatory, 9-237—satellite IV disappeared 15 minutes before calculated time; about a minute later it re-appeared; disappeared again; re-appeared nine minutes later. For Todd’s observations see the Observatory, 2-227—six times, between June 9 and July 2, 1878, a satellite was visible when, according to prediction, it should have been invisible. For some more instances of extreme vagaries of these satellites, see Monthly Notices, 43-427, and Jour. B. A. A., 14-27: observations by Noble, Turner, White, Holmes, Freeman, Goodacre, Ellis, and Molesworth. In periodical astronomical publications, there is no more easily findable material for heresy than such observations. We shall have other instances. They abound in the English Mechanic, for instance. But, in spite of a host of such observations, Prof. Young (The Sun, p. 35) says that the time occupied by light coming from these satellites is doubtful by “only a fraction of a second.” It is of course another instance of the astronomers who know very little of astronomy.

It would have been undignified, if the astronomers had taken the sheep of little Bo-peep for their determinations. They took 58the satellites of Jupiter. They said that the velocity of light is about 190,000 miles a second.

So did the physicists.

Our own notion is that there is no velocity of light: that one sees a thing, or doesn’t; that if the satellites of Jupiter behave differently according to proximity to this earth, that may be because this earth affects them, so affecting them, because the planets may not, as we may find, be at a thousandth part of the “demonstrated” distances. The notion of velocity of light finds support, we are told in the text books, in the velocity of sound. If it does, it doesn’t find support in gravitational effects, because, according to the same text books, gravitational effects have no velocity.

The physicists agreed with the astronomers. A beam of light is sent through, and is reflected back through, a revolving shutter—but it’s complex, and we’re simple: we shall find that there is no need to go into the details of this mechanism. It is not that a machine is supposed to register a velocity of 186,000 miles a second, or we’d have to be technical: it is that the eye is supposed to perceive—

And there is not a physicist in the world who can perceive when a parlor magician palms off playing-cards. Hearing, or feeling, or if one could smell light, some kind of a claim might be made—but the well-known limitations of seeing; common knowledge of little boys that a brand waved about in the dark can not be followed by the eyes. The limit of the perceptible is said to be ten changes a second.

I think of the astronomers as occupying a little vortex of their own in the cosmic swoon in which wave all things, at least in this one supposed solar system. Call it swoon, or call it hypnosis—but that it is never absolute, and that all of us sometimes have awareness of our condition, and moments of wondering what it’s all about and why we do and think the things that sometimes we wake up and find ourselves doing and thinking. Upon page 281, Old and New Astronomy, Richard Proctor awakens momentarily, and says: “The agreement between these results seems close enough, but those who know the actual difficulty of precise time-observations of the phenomena of Jupiter’s satellites, to say 59nothing of the present condition of the theory of their motions, can place very little reliance on the velocity of light deduced from such observations.” Upon pages 603-607, Proctor reviews some observations other than those that I have listed—satellites that have disappeared, come back, disappeared, returned again so bewilderingly that he wrote what we have quoted—observations by Gorton, Wray, Gambart, Secchi, Main, Grover, Smyth-Maclear-Pearson, Hodgson, Carlisle, Siminton. And that is the last of his awareness: Proctor then swoons back into his hypnosis. He then takes up the determination of the velocity of light by the physicists, as if they could be relied upon, accepting every word, writing his gospel, glorying in this miracle of science. I call it a tainted agreement between the physicists and the astronomers. I prefer mild language. If by a method by which nothing could be found out, the astronomers determined that the velocity of light is about 190,000 miles a second, and if the physicists by another method found about the same result, what kind of harmony can that be other than the reekings of two consistent stenches? Proctor wrote that very little reliance could be placed upon anything depending upon Jupiter’s satellites. It never occurred to him to wonder by what miracle the physicists agreed with these unreliable calculations. It is the situation that repeats in the annals of astronomy—a baseless thing that is supposed to have a foundation slipped under it, wedged in, or God knows how introduced or foisted. I prefer not to bother much with asking how the physicists could determine anything of a higher number of changes than ten per second. If it be accepted that the physicists are right, the question is—by what miracle were the astronomers right, if they had “very little” to rely upon?

Determinations of planetary distances and determinations of the velocity of light have squirmed together: they represent either an agreeable picture of co-operation, or a study in mutual support by writhing infamies. With most emphasis I have taken the position that the vagaries of the Jovian satellites are so great that extremely little reliance can be placed upon them, but now it seems to me that the emphasis should be upon the admission that, in addition to these factors of indeterminateness, it was, 60up to Proctor’s day, not known with anything like accuracy when the satellites should appear and disappear. In that case one wonders as to the state of the theory in Roemer’s day. It was in the mind of Roemer that the two “determinations” we are now considering first most notably satisfied affinity: mutual support by velocity of light and distances in this supposed solar system. Upon his Third Law, which, as we shall see later, he constructed upon at least three absences of anything to build upon, Kepler had, upon observations upon Mars, deduced 13,000,000 miles as this earth’s distance from the sun. By the same method, which is the now discredited method of simultaneous observations, Roemer determined this distance to be 82,000,000 miles. I am not concerned with this great discrepancy so much as with the astronomers’ reasons for starting off distances in millions instead of hundreds or thousands of miles.

In Kepler’s day the strongest objection urged against the Copernican system was that, if this earth moves around the sun, the stars should show annual displacements—and it is only under modern “refinements” that the stars do so minutely vary, perhaps. The answer to this objection was that the stars are vastly farther away than was commonly supposed. Entailed by this answer was the necessity of enlarging upon common suppositions generally. Kepler determined or guessed, just as one pleases, and then Roemer outdid him. Roemer was followed by Huygens, with continued outdoing: 100,000,000 according to Huygens. Huygens took for his basis his belief that this earth is intermediate in size to Mars and Venus. Astronomers, to-day, say that this earth is not so intermediate. We see that, in the secondary phase of development, the early astronomers, with no means of knowing whether the sun is a thousand or a million miles away, guessed or determined such distances as 82,000,000 miles and 100,000,000 miles, to account for the changelessness of the stars. If the mean of these extremes is about the distance of present dogmas, we’d like to know by what miracle a true distance so averages two products of wild methods. Our expression is that these developments had their origin in conspiracy and prostitution, if one has a fancy for such accusations; or, if everybody else has been so agreeable, we think more amiably, ourselves, that 61it was all a matter of comfortably adjusting and being obliging all around. Our expression is that ever since the astronomers have seen and have calculated as they should see and should calculate. For instance, when this earth’s distance from the sun was supposed to be 95,000,000 miles, all astronomers taking positions of Mars, calculated a distance of 95,000,000 miles; but then, when the distance was cut down to about 92,000,000 miles, all astronomers, taking positions of Mars, calculated about a distance of 92,000,000 miles. It may sound like a cynicism of mine, but in saying this I am quoting Richard Proctor, in one of his lucid suspicions (Old and New Astronomy, p. 280).

With nothing but monotony, and with nothing that looks like relief for us, the data of conspiracy, or of co-operation, continue. Upon worthless observations upon the transits of Venus, 1761 and 1769, this earth’s orbit was found by Encke to be about 190,000,000 miles across (distance of the sun about 95,000,000 miles). Altogether progress had been more toward the wild calculations of Huygens than toward the undomesticated calculations of Roemer. So, to agree with this change, if not progress, Delambre, taking worthless observations upon the satellites of Jupiter, cut down Roemer’s worthless determinations, and announced that light crosses the plane of this earth’s orbit in 16 minutes and 32 seconds—as it ought to, Prof. Young would say. It was then that the agreeably tainted physicists started spinning and squinting, calculating “independently,” we are told, that Delambre was right. Everything settled—everybody comfortable—see Chambers’ Handbook of Astronomy, published at this time—that the sun’s distance had been ascertained, “with great accuracy” to be 95,298,260 miles—

But then occurred something that is badly, but protectively, explained, in most astronomical works. Foucault interfered with the deliciousness of those 95,298,260 miles. One may read many books that mention this subject, and one will always read that Foucault, the physicist, by an “independent” method, or by an “absolutely independent” method, disagreed somewhat. The “disagreement” is paraded so that one has an impression of painstaking, independent scientists not utterly slavishly supporting one another, but at the same time keeping well over the 90,000,000 62mark, and so essentially agreeing, after all. But we find that there was no independence in Foucault’s “experiments.” We come across the same old disgusting connivance, or the same amiable complaisance, perhaps. See Clerke’s History of Astronomy, p. 230. We learn that astronomers, to explain oscillations of the sun, had decided that the sun must be, not 95,298,260 miles away, but about 91,000,000. To oblige them, perhaps, or innocently, never having heard of them, perhaps, though for ten years they had been announcing that a new determination was needed, Foucault “found” that the velocity of light is less than had been necessary to suppose, when the sun was supposed to be about 95,000,000 miles away, and he “found” the velocity to be exactly what it should be, supposing the sun to be 91,000,000 miles away. Then it was that the astronomers announced, not that they had cut down the distance of the sun because of observations upon solar oscillations, but because they had been very much impressed by the “independent” observations upon the velocity of light, by Foucault, the physicist. This squirm occurred at the meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society, February, 1864. There would have to be more squirms. If, then, the distance across this earth’s orbit was “found” to be less than Delambre had supposed, somebody would have to find that light comes from the satellites of Jupiter a little slower than Delambre had “proved.” Whereupon, Glassenapp “found” that the time is 16 minutes and 40 seconds, which is what he should, or “ought to,” find. Whereupon, there would have to be re-adjustment of Encke’s calculations of distance of sun, upon worthless observations upon transits of Venus. And whereupon again, Newcomb went over the very same observations by which Encke had compelled agreement with the dogmas of his day, and Newcomb calculated, as was required, that the distance agreed with Foucault’s reduction. Whether, in the first place, Encke ever did calculate, as he said he did, or not, his determination was mere agreement with Laplace’s in the seventh book of the Méchanique Céleste. Of course he said that he had calculated independently, because his method was by triangulation, and Laplace’s was the gravitational.

63That the word “worthless” does apply to observations upon transits of Venus:

In Old and New Astronomy, Proctor says that the observations upon the transits of 1761 and 1769 were “altogether unsatisfactory.” One supposes that anything that is altogether unsatisfactory can’t be worth much. In the next transit, of 1874, various nations co-operated. The observations were so disappointing that the Russian, Italian, and Austrian Governments refused to participate in the expeditions of 1882. In Reminiscences of an Astronomer, p. 181, Newcomb says that the United States Commission, of which he was Secretary, had, up to 1902 never published in full its observations, and probably never would, because by that time all other members were either dead or upon the retired list.

Method of Mars—more monotony—because of criticisms of the taking of parallax by simultaneous observations, Dr. David Gill went to the Island of Ascension, during the opposition of Mars of 1877, to determine alone, by the diurnal method, the distance of this earth from the sun, from positions of Mars. For particulars of Gill’s method, see, for instance, Poor’s Solar System, p. 86. Here Prof. Poor says that, of course, the orbital motion of Mars had to be allowed for, in Gill’s calculations. If so, then of course this earth’s orbital motion had to be allowed for. If Dr. Gill knew the space traversed by this earth in its orbit, and the curvature of its path, he knew the size and shape of the orbit, and consequently the distance from the sun. Then he took for the basis of his allowance that this earth is about 93,000,000 miles from the sun, and calculated that this earth is about 93,000,000 miles from the sun. For this classic deduction from the known to the same known, he received a gold medal.

In our earlier surveys, we were concerned with the false claim that there can be application of celestial mechanics to celestial phenomena; but, as to later subjects, the method is different. The method of all these calculations is triangulation.

One simple question:

To what degree can triangulation be relied upon?

64To great degree in measuring the height of a building, or in the little distances of a surveyor’s problems. It is clear enough that astronomers did not invent the telescope. They adopted the spectroscope from another science. Their primary mathematical principle of triangulation they have taken from the surveyors, to whom it is serviceable. The triangle is another emblem of the sterility of the science of astronomy. Upon the coat of arms of this great mule of the sciences, I would draw a prism within a triangle.

65

CHAPTER NINE

According to Prof. Newcomb, for instance, the distance of the sun is about 380 times the distance of the moon—as determined by triangulation. But, upon page 22, Popular Astronomy, Newcomb tells of another demonstration, with strikingly different results—as determined by triangulation.

A split god.

The god Triangulation is not one undivided deity.

The other method with strikingly different results is the method of Aristarchus. It cuts down the distance of the sun, from 380 to 20 times the distance of the moon. When an observer upon this earth sees the moon half-illumined, the angle at the moon, between observer and sun, is a right angle; a third line between observer and sun completes a triangle. According to Aristarchus, the tilt of the third line includes an angle of 86 degrees, making the sun-earth line 20 times longer than the moon-earth line.

“In principle,” says Newcomb, “the method is quite correct and very ingenious, but it can not be applied in practice.” He says that Aristarchus measured wrong; that the angle between the moon-earth line and the earth-sun line is almost 90 degrees and not 86 degrees. Then he says that the method can not be applied because no one can determine this angle that he had said is of almost 90 degrees. He says something that is so incongruous with the inflations of astronomers that they’d sizzle if their hypnotized readers could read and think at the same time. Newcomb says that the method of Aristarchus can not be applied because no astronomer can determine when the moon is half-illumined.

We have had some experience.

Does anybody who has been through what we’ve been through suppose that there is a Prof. Keeler in the world who would not 66declare that trigonometrically and spectroscopically and micrometrically he had determined the exact moment and exasperating, or delightful, decimal of a moment of semi-illumination of the moon, were it not that, according to at least as good a mathematician as he, determination based upon that demonstration does show that the sun is only 20 times as far away as the moon? But suppose we agree that this simple thing can not be done.

Then instantly we think of some of the extravagant claims with which astronomers have stuffed supine credulities. Crawling in their unsightly confusion that sickens for simplification, is this offense to harmony:

That astronomers can tell under which Crusade, or its decimalated moment a shine left a star, but can not tell when a shine reaches a line on the moon—

Glory and triumph and selectness and inflation—or that we shall have renown as evangelists, spreading the homely and wholesome doctrine of humility. Hollis, in Chats on Astronomy, tells us that the diameter of this earth, at the equator, is 41,851,160 feet. But blessed be the meek, we tell him. In the Observatory, 19-118, is published the determination, by the astronomer Brenner, of the time of rotation of Venus, as to which other astronomers differ by hundreds of days. According to Brenner, the time is 23 hours, 57 minutes, and 7.5459 seconds. I do note that this especial refinement is a little too ethereal for the Editor of the Observatory: he hopes Brenner will pardon him, but is it necessary to carry out the finding to the fourth decimal of a second? However, I do not mean to say that all astronomers are as refined as Brenner, for instance. In the Jour. B. A. A., 1-382, Edwin Holmes, perhaps coarsely, expresses some views. He says that such “exactness” as Capt. Noble’s in writing that the diameter of Neptune is 38,133 miles and that of Uranus is 33,836 miles is bringing science into contempt, because very little is known of these planets; that, according to Nelson, these diameters are 27,000 miles and 28,500 miles. MacPherson, in A Century’s Progress in Science, quotes Prof. Serviss: that the average parallax of a star, which is an ordinary astronomic quantity, is “about equal to the apparent distance between two pins, placed one inch apart, and viewed from a distance of one hundred and 67eighty miles.” Stick pins in a cushion, in New York—go to Saratoga and look at them—be overwhelmed with the more than human powers of the scientifically anointed—or ask them when shines half the moon.

The moon’s surface is irregular. I do not say that anybody with brains enough to know when he has half a shoe polished should know when the sun has half the moon shined. I do say that if this simple thing can not be known, the crowings of astronomers as to enormously more difficult determinations are mere barnyard disturbances.

Triangulation that, according to his little priests, straddles orbits and on his apex wears a star—that he’s a false Colossus; shrinking, at the touch of data, back from the stars, deflating below the sun and moon; stubbing down below the clouds of this earth, so that the different stories that he told to Aristarchus and to Newcomb are the conflicting vainglories of an earth-tied squatter—

The blow that crumples a god:

That, by triangulation, there is not an astronomer in the world who can tell the distance of a thing only five miles away.

Humboldt, Cosmos, 5-138:

Height of Mauna Loa: 18,410 feet, according to Cook; 16,611, according to Marchand; 13,761, according to Wilkes—according to triangulation.

In the Scientific American, 119-31, a mountain climber calls the Editor to account for having written that Mt. Everest is 29,002 feet high. He says that, in his experience, there is always an error of at least ten per cent. in calculating the height of a mountain, so that all that can be said is that Mt. Everest is between 26,100 and 31,900 feet high. In the Scientific American, 102-183, and 319, Miss Annie Peck cites two measurements of a mountain in India: they differ by 4000 feet.

The most effective way of treating this subject is to find a list of measurements of a mountain’s height before the mountain was climbed, and compare with the barometric determination, when the mountain was climbed. For a list of 8 measurements, by triangulation, of the height of Mt. St. Elias, see the Alpine Journal, 22-150: they vary from 12,672 to 19,500 feet. D’Abruzzi 68climbed Mt. St. Elias, Aug. 1, 1897. See a paper, in the Alpine Journal, 19-125. D’Abruzzi’s barometric determination—18,092 feet.

Suppose that, in measuring, by triangulation, the distance of anything five miles away, the error is, say ten per cent. But, as to anything ten miles away, there is no knowing what the error would be. By triangulation, the moon has been “found” to be 240,000 miles away. It may be 240 or 240,000,000 miles away.

69

CHAPTER TEN

Pseudo heart of a phantom thing—it is Keplerism, pulsating with Sir Isaac Newton’s regularizations.

If triangulation can not be depended upon accurately to measure distance greater than a mile or two between objects and observers, the aspects of Keplerism that depend upon triangulation should be of no more concern to us than two pins in a cushion 180 miles away: nevertheless so affected by something like seasickness are we by the wobbling deductions of the conventionalists that we shall have direct treatment, or independent expressions, whenever we can have, or seem to have, them. Kepler saw a planetary system, and he felt that, if that system could be formulated in terms of proportionality, by discovering one of the relations quantitatively, all its measurements could be deduced. I take from Newcomb, in Popular Astronomy, that, in Kepler’s view, there was system in the arrangement and motions of the four little traitors that sneak around Jupiter; that Kepler, with no suspicions of these little betrayers, reasoned that this central body and its accompaniments were a representation, upon a small scale, of the solar system, as a whole. Kepler found that the cubes of mean distances of neighboring satellites of Jupiter, divided by the squares of their times, gave the same quotients. He reasoned that the same relations subsisted among planets, if the solar system be only an enlargement of the Jovian system.

Observatory, December, 1920: “The discordances between theory and observation (as to the motions of Jupiter’s satellites) are of such magnitude that continued observations of their precise moments of eclipses are very much to be desired.” In the Report of the Jupiter Section of the British Astronomical Society (Mems. B. A. A., 8-83) is a comparison between observed times and calculated times of these satellites. 65 observations, in the 70year 1899, are listed. In one instance prediction and observation agree. Many differences of 3 or 4 minutes are noted, and there are differences of 5 or 6 minutes.

Kepler formulated his law of proportionality between times and distances of Jupiter’s satellites without knowing what the times are. It should be noted that the observations in the year 1899 took into consideration fluctuations that were discovered by Roemer, long after Kepler’s time.

Just for the sake of having something that looks like opposition, let us try to think that Kepler was miraculously right anyway. Then, if something that may resemble Kepler’s Third Law does subsist in the Jovian satellites that were known to Kepler, by what resemblance to logicality can that proportionality extend to the whole solar system, if a solar system can be supposed?

In the year 1892, a fifth satellite of Jupiter was discovered. Maybe it would conform to Kepler’s law, if anybody could find out accurately in what time the faint speck does revolve. The sixth and the seventh satellites of Jupiter revolve so eccentrically that, in line of sight, their orbits intersect. Their distances are subject to very great variations; but, inasmuch as it might be said that their mean distances do conform to Kepler’s Third Law, or would, if anybody could find out what their mean distances are, we go on to the others. The eight and the ninth conform to nothing that can be asserted. If one of them goes around in one orbit at one time, the next time around it goes in some other orbit, and in some other plane. Inasmuch then as Kepler’s Third Law, deduced from the system of Jupiter’s satellites, can not be thought to extend even within that minor system, one’s thoughts stray into wondering what two pins in a cushion in Louisville, Ky., look like from somewhere up in the Bronx, rather than to dwell any more upon extension of any such pseudo-proportionality to the supposed solar system, as a whole.

It seems that in many of Kepler’s demonstrations was this failure to have grounds for a starting-point, before extending his reasoning. He taught the doctrine of the music of the spheres, and assigned bass voices to Saturn and Jupiter, then tenor to Mars, contralto to the female planet, and soprano, or falsetto, 71rather, to little Mercury. And that is all very well and consistently worked out in detail, and it does seem reasonable that, if ponderous, if not lumpy, Jupiter, does sing bass, the other planets join in, according to sex and huskiness—however, one does feel dissatisfied.

We have dealt with Newcomb’s account. But other conventionalists say that Kepler worked out his Third Law by triangulation upon Venus and Mercury, when at greatest elongation, “finding” that the relation between Mercury and Venus is the same as the relation between Venus and this earth. If, according to conventionalists, there was no “proof” that this earth moves, in Kepler’s time, Kepler started by assuming that this earth moves between Venus and Mars; he assumed that the distance of Venus from the sun, at greatest elongation, represents mean distance; he assumed that observations upon Mercury indicated Mercury’s orbit, an orbit that to this day defies analysis. However, for the sake of seeming to have opposition, we shall try to think that Kepler’s data did give him material for the formulation of his law. His data were chiefly the observations of Tycho Brahé. But, by the very same data, Tycho had demonstrated that this earth does not move between Venus and Mars; that this earth is stationary. That stoutest of conventionalists, but at the same time seeming colleague of ours, Richard Proctor, says that Tycho Brahé’s system was consistent with all data. I have never heard of an astronomer who denies this. Then the heart of modern astronomy is not Keplerism, but is one diversion of data that beat for such a monstrosity as something like Siamese Twins, serving both Keplerism and the Tychonic system. I fear that some of our attempts to find opposition are not very successful.

So far, this mediæval doctrine, restricting to times and distances, though for all I know the planets sing proportionately as well as move proportionately, has data to interpret or to misinterpret. But, when it comes to extending Kepler’s Third Law to the exterior planets, I have never read of any means that Kepler had of determining their proportional distances. He simply said that Mars and Jupiter and Saturn were at distances that proportionalized with their times. He argued, reasonably enough, 72perhaps, that the slower-moving planets are the remoter, but that has nothing to do with proportional remoteness.

This is the pseudo heart of phantom astronomy.

To it Sir Isaac Newton gave a seeming of coherence.

I suspect that it was not by chance that the story of an apple should so importantly appear in two mythologies. The story of Newton and the apple was first told by Voltaire. One has suspicions of Voltaire’s meanings. Suppose Newton did see an apple fall to the ground, and was so inspired, or victimized, into conceiving in terms of universal attraction. But had he tried to take a bone away from a dog, he would have had another impression, and would have been quite as well justified in explaining in terms of universal repulsion. If, as to all inter-acting things, electric, biologic, psychologic, economic, sociologic, magnetic, chemic, as well as canine, repulsion is as much of a determinant as is attraction, the Law of Gravitation, which is an attempt to explain in terms of attraction only, is as false as would be dogmas upon all other subjects if couched in terms of attraction only. So it is that the law of gravitation has been a rule of chagrin and fiasco. So, perhaps accepting, or passionately believing in every symbol of it, a Dr. Adams calculates that the Leonids will appear in November, 1899—but chagrin and fiasco—the Leonids do not appear. The planet Neptune was not discovered mathematically, because, though it was in the year 1846, somewhere near the position of the formula, in the year 1836 or 1856, it would have been nowhere near the orbit calculated by Leverrier and Adams. Some time ago, against the clamor that a Trans-Uranian planet had been discovered mathematically, it was our suggestion that, if this be not a myth, let the astronomer now discover the Trans-Neptunian planet mathematically. That there is no such mathematics, in the face of any number of learned treatises, is far more strikingly betrayed by those shining little misfortunes, the satellites of Jupiter. Satellite after satellite of Jupiter was discovered, but by accident or by observation, and not once by calculation: never were the perturbations of the earlier known satellites made the material for deducing the positions of other satellites. Astronomers have pointed to the sky, and there has been nothing; one of them pointed in four directions at once, and four times 73over, there was nothing; and many times when they have not pointed at all, there has been something.

Apples fall to the ground, and dogs growl, if their bones are taken away: also flowers bloom in the spring, and a trodden worm turns.

Nevertheless strong is the delusion that there is gravitational astronomy, and the great power of the Law of Gravitation, in popular respectfulness, is that it is mathematically expressed. According to my view, one might as well say that it is fetishly expressed. Descartes was as great a mathematician as Newton: veritably enough may it be said that he invented, or discovered, analytic geometry; only patriotically do Englishmen say that Newton invented, or discovered, the infinitesimal calculus. Descartes, too, formulated a law of the planets and not by a symbol was he less bewildering and convincing to the faithful, but his law was not in terms of gravitation, but in terms of vorticose motion. In the year 1732, the French Academy awarded a prize to John Bernouli, for his magnificent mathematical demonstration, which was as unintelligible as anybody’s. Bernouli, too, formulated, or said he formulated, planetary inter-actions, as mathematically as any of his hypnotized admirers could have desired: it, too, was not gravitational.

The fault that I find with a great deal of mathematics in astronomy is the fault that I should find in architecture, if a temple, or a skyscraper, were supposed to prove something. Pure mathematics is architecture: it has no more place in astronomy than has the Parthenon. It is the arbitrary: it will not spoil a line nor dent a surface for a datum. There is a faint uniformity in every chaos: in discolorations on an old wall, anybody can see recognizable appearances; in such a mixture a mathematician will see squares and circles and triangles. If he would merely elaborate triangles and not apply his diagrams to theories upon the old wall itself, his constructions would be as harmless as poetry. In our metaphysics, unity can not, of course, be the related. A mathematical expression of unity can not, except approximately, apply to a planet, which is not final, but is part of something.

Sir Isaac Newton lived long ago. Every thought in his mind 74was a reflection of his era. To appraise his mind at all comprehensively, consider his works in general. For some other instances of his love of numbers, see, in his book upon the Prophecies of Daniel, his determinations upon the eleventh horn of Daniel’s fourth animal. If that demonstration be not very acceptable nowadays, some of his other works may now be archaic. For all I know Jupiter may sing bass, either smoothly or lumpily, and for all I know there may be some formulable ratio between an eleventh horn of a fourth animal and some other quantity: I complain against the dogmas that have solidified out of the vaporings of such minds, but I suppose I am not very substantial, myself. Upon general principles, I say that we take no ships of the time of Newton for models for the ships of today, and build and transport in ways that are magnificently, or perhaps disastrously, different, but that, at any rate, are not the same; and that the principles of biology and chemistry and all the other sciences, except astronomy, are not what they were in Newton’s time, whether every one of them is a delusion or not. My complaint is that the still mediæval science of astronomy holds back alone in a general appearance of advancement, even though there probably never has been real advancement.

There is something else to be said upon Keplerism and Newtonism. It is a squirm. I fear me that our experiences have sophisticated us. We have noted the division in Keplerism, by which, like everything else that we have examined, it is as truly interpretable one way as it is another way.

The squirm:

To lose all sense of decency and value of data, but to be agreeable; but to be like everybody else, and intend to turn our agreeableness to profit;

To agree with the astronomers that Kepler’s three laws are, not absolutely true, of course, but are approximations, and that the planets do move, as in Keplerian doctrine they are said to move—but then to require only one demonstration that this earth is one of the planets;

To admire Newton’s Principia from the beginning to the end of it, having, like almost all other admirers, never even seen a copy of it; to accept every theorem in it, without having the 75slightest notion what any one of them means; to accept that moving bodies do obey the laws of motion, and must move in one of the conic sections—but then to require only one demonstration that this earth is a moving body.

Kepler’s three laws are popularly supposed to demonstrate that this earth moves around the sun. This is a mistake. There is something wrong with everything that is popular. As was said, by us, before, accept that this earth is stationary, and Kepler’s doctrines apply equally well to a sun around which proportionately inter-spaced planets move in ellipses, the whole system moving around a central and stationary earth. All observations upon the motions of heavenly bodies are in accord with this interpretation of Kepler’s laws. Then as to nothing but a quandary, which means that this earth is stationary, or which means that this earth is not stationary, just as one pleases, Sir Isaac Newton selected, or pleased himself and others. Without one datum, without one little indication more convincing one way than the other, he preferred to think that this earth is one of the moving planets. To this degree had he the “profundity” that we read about. He wrote no books upon the first and second horns of his dilemma: he simply disregarded the dilemma.

To anybody who may be controversially inclined, I offer simplification. He may feel at a disadvantage against batteries of integrals and bombardments of quaternions, transcendental functions, conics, and all the other stores of an astronomer’s munitions—

Admire them. Accept that they do apply to the bodies that move around the sun. Require one demonstration that this earth is one of those bodies. For treatment of any such “demonstration,” see our disquisition, or our ratiociations upon the Three Abstrusities, or our intolerably painful attempts to write seriously upon the Three Abstrusities.

We began with three screams from an exhilarated mathematician. We have had some doubtful adventures, trying hard to pretend that monsters, or little difficulties, did really oppose us. We have reached, not the heart of a system, but the crotch of quandary.

76

CHAPTER ELEVEN

We have seen that some of the most brilliant inspirations of god-like intellects, or some of the most pestilential emanations from infected minds, have been attempts to account for the virtual changelessness of the stars. Above all other data of astronomy, that virtual changelessness of positions stands out as a crucial circumstance in my own mind. To account for constellations that have not changed in 2,000 years, astronomers say that they conceive of inconceivable distances. We shall have expressions of our own upon the virtually changeless positions of the stars; but there will be difficulties for us if the astronomers ever have found that some stars move around or with other stars. I shall take up the story of Prof. Struve and the “Companion of Procyon,” with more detail, for the sake of some more light upon refinement, exactness, accuracy in astronomy, and for the sake of belittling, or for the sake of sneering, or anything else that anybody may choose to call it.

Prof. Struve’s announcement of his discovery of the “Companion of Procyon” is published in Monthly Notices, 33-430—that, upon the 19th of March, 1873, Struve had discovered the companion of Procyon, having compared it micrometrically, having tested his observations with three determinations of position-angle, three measures of distance, and three additional determinations of position-angle, finding all in “excellent agreement.” No optical illusion could be possible, it is said, because another astronomer, Lindemann, had seen the object. Technically, Struve publishes a table of his observations: sidereal time, distances, position-angles; from March 19 to April 2, 1873, after which his observations had to be discontinued until the following year. In Monthly Notices, 34-355, are published the resumed observations. Struve says that Auwers would not accept the discovery, unless, in the year that had elapsed, the “companion” had shown increase in position, consistent with theory. Struve writes—“This 77increase has really shown itself in the most remarkable manner.” Therefore, he considers it “decisively established” that the object of his observations was the object of Auwers’ calculations. He says that Ceraski, of Moscow, had seen the “companion,” “without being warned of the place where it was to be looked for.”

However—see back some chapters.

It may be said that, nevertheless, other stars have companions that do move as they should move. Later we shall consider this subject, thinking that it may be that lights have been seen to change position near some stars, but that never has a star revolved around another star, as to fit palæo-astronomic theory it should. I take for a basis of analogy that never has one sat in a park and watched a tree revolve around one, but that given the affliction, or the endowment, of an astronomer, illusion of such a revolution one may have. We sit in a park. We notice a tree. Wherever we get the notion, we do have the notion that the tree has moved. Then, farther along, we notice another tree, and, as an indication of our vivid imagination or something else, we think it is the same tree, farther along. After that we pick out tree after tree, farther along, and, convinced that it is the same tree, of course conclude that the thing is revolving around us. Exactness and refinement develop: we compute the elements of its orbit. We close our eyes and predict where the tree will be when next we look; and there, by the same process of selection and identification, it is where it “should” be. And if we have something of almost everybody’s mania for speed, we make that dam thing spin around with such velocity that we, too, reel in a chaos of very much unsettled botanic conventions. There is nothing far-fetched in this analogy, except the factor of velocity. Goldschmidt did announce that there were half a dozen faint points of light around Sirius, and it was Dawes’ suspicion that Clark had arbitrarily picked out one of them. It is our expression that all around Sirius, at various distances from Sirius, faint points of light were seen, and that at first, even for the first sixteen years, astronomers were not thoroughly hypnotized, and would not pick out the especial point of light that they should have picked out, so that there was nothing like agreement between 78the calculated and the observed orbit. Besides the irreconcilable observations noted by Flammarion, see the Intel. Obs., 1-482, for others. Then came standardized seeing. So, in the Observatory, 20-73 is published a set of observations, in the year 1896, upon the “Companion of Sirius,” placing it exactly where it should be. Nevertheless, under this set of observations is published another set, so different that the Editor asks—“Does this mean that there are two companions?”

Dark Companions require a little more eliminative treatment. So the variable nebulæ, then—and do dark nebulæ revolve around light nebulæ? For instances of variable nebulæ, see Mems. R. A. S., 49-214; Comptes Rendus, 59-637; Monthly Notices, 38-104. It may be said that they are not of the Algol-type. Neither is Algol, we have shown.

According to the compulsions of data, our idea is that the stars that seem to be fixed in position are fixed in position, so now “proper motion” is as irreconcilable to us as relative motions.

As to “proper motion,” the situation is this:

The stars that were catalogued 2,000 years ago have virtually not changed, or, if there be refinement in modern astronomy, have changed no more than a little more nearly exact charting would account for; but, in astronomic theory, the stars are said to be thought of as flying apart at unthinkable velocity; so then evidence of changed positions of stars is welcome to astronomers. As to well-known constellations, it can not be said that there has been change; so, with several exceptions, “proper motion” is attributed to stars that are not well-known.

The result is an amusing trap. Great proper motion is said to indicate relative nearness to this earth. Of the twenty-five stars of supposed greatest proper motion, all but two are faintest of stars; so these twenty-three are said to be nearest this earth. But when astronomers take the relative parallax of a star, by reference to a fainter star, they agree that the fainter star, because fainter, is farther away. So one time faintness associates with nearness, and then conveniences change, and faintness associates with farness, and the whole subject so associates with humorousness, 79that if we’re going to be serious at all in these expressions of ours we had better pass on.

Observatory, March, 1914:

A group of three stars that disappeared.

If three stars disappeared at once, they were acted upon by something that affected all in common. Try to think of some one force that would not tear the seeable into visible rags, that could blot out three stars, if they were trillions of miles apart. If they were close together that ends the explanation that only because stars are trillions of miles apart have they, for at least 2,000 years, seemed to hold the same relative positions.

In Agnes Clerke’s System of the Stars, are cited many instances of stars that seem to be so closely related that it seems impossible to think that they are trillions, or billions, or millions of miles apart: such formations as “seven aligned stars appearing to be strung on a silvery filament.” There are loops of stars in a cluster in Auriga; lines and arches in Ophiuchus; zig-zag figures in Sagittarius. As to stars that not only seem close together but that are colored alike, Miss Clerke expresses her feeling that they are close together—“If these colors be inherent, it is difficult to believe that the stars distinguished by them are simply thrown together by perspective.” As to figures in Sagittarius, Fison (Recent Advances in Astronomy) cites an instance of 30 small stars in the form of a forked twig, with dark rifts parallel. According to Fison, probability is overwhelmingly against the three uncommon stars in the belt of Orion falling into a straight line, by chance distribution, considering also that below this line is another of five faint stars parallel. There are dark lanes or rifts in the Milky Way that are like branches from main lanes or rifts, and the rifts sometimes have well-defined edges. In many regions where there are dark rifts there are lines of stars that are roughly parallel—

That it is not distances apart that have held the stars from changing relatively to one another, because there are hosts of indications that some stars are close together, and are, or have been, affected, in common, by local formative forces.

80For a detailed comparison, by J. E. Gore, of stars of today with stars catalogued by Al-Sufi, about 1,000 years ago, see the Observatory, vol. 23. The stars have not changed in position, but it does seem that there have been many changes in magnitude.

Other changes—Pubs. Astro. Soc. Pacific, No. 185 (1920)—discovery of the seventeenth new star in one nebula (Andromeda). For lists of stars that have disappeared, see Monthly Notices, 8-16; 10-18; 11-47; Sidereal Messenger, 6-320; Jour. B. A. A., 14-255. Nebulæ that have disappeared—see Amer. Jour. Sci., 2-33-436; Clerke’s System of the Stars, p. 293; Nature, 30-20.

In the Sidereal Messenger, 5-269, Prof. Colbert writes that, upon August 20, 1886, an astronomer, in Chicago, saw, for about half an hour, a small comet-like projection from the star Zeta, in Cassiopeia.

So, then, changes have been seen at the distance of the stars.

When the new star in Perseus appeared, in February, 1901, it was a point of light. Something went out from it, giving it in six months a diameter equal to half the apparent diameter of the moon. The appearances looked structural. To say loosely that they were light-effects, something like a halo, perhaps, is to ignore their complexity and duration and differences. According to Newcomb, who is occasionally quotable in our favor, these radiations were not mere light-rays, because they did not go out uniformly from the star, but moved out variously and knotted and curved.

It was visible motion, at the distance of Nova Persei.

In Monthly Notices, 58-334, Dr. Espin writes that, upon the night of Jan. 16, 1898, he saw something that looked like a cloud in Perseus. It could have been nothing in the atmosphere of this earth, nor anything far from the constellation, because he saw it again in Perseus, upon Jan. 24. He writes that, upon Feb. 17, Mr. Heath and Dr. Halm saw it, like a cloud, dimming and discoloring stars shining through it. At the meeting of the British Astronomical Association, Feb. 23, 1898 (Jour. B. A. A., 8-216) Dr. Espin described this appearance and answered questions. “It was not a nebula, and was not like one.” 81“Whatever it was it had the peculiar property of dimming and blotting out stars.”

This thing moved into Perseus and then moved away.

Clerke, The System of the Stars, p. 295—a nebula that changed position abruptly, between the years 1833 and 1835, and then changed no more. According to Sir John Herschel, a star was central in this nebula, when observed in 1827, and in 1833, but, in August, 1835, the star was upon the eastern side of the nebula.

That it is not distance from this earth that has kept changes of position of the stars from being seen, for 2,000 years, because occasional, abrupt changes of position have been seen at the distance of the stars.

That, whether there be a shell-like, revolving composition, holding the stars in position, and in which the stars are openings, admitting light from an existence external to the shell, or not, all stars are at about the same distance from this earth, as they would be, if this earth were stationary and central to such a shell, revolving around it—

According to the aberration-forms of the stars.

All stars, at the pole of the ecliptic, describe circles annually; stars lower down describe ellipses that reduce more and more the farther down they are, until at the ecliptic they describe straight lines yearly.

Suppose all the stars to be openings, fixed in position relatively to one another, in some inter-spacing substance. Conceive of a gyration to the whole aggregation, and relatively to a central and stationary earth: then, as seen from this earth, all would describe circles, near the axis, ellipses lower down, and straight lines at the limit of transformation. If all were at the same distance from this earth, or if all were points in one gyrating concave formation, equi-distant at all points from the central earth, all would have the same amplitude. All aberration-forms of the stars, whether of brilliant or faint stars, whether circles or ellipses or straight lines have the same amplitude: about 41 seconds of arc.

If all stars are points of light admitted from externality, held 82fixed and apart in one shell-like composition that is opaque in some parts and translucent in some parts and perforated generally—

The Gegenschein—

That we have indication that there is such a shell around our existence.

The Gegenschein is a round patch of light in the sky. It seems to be reflected sunlight, at night, because it keeps position about opposite the sun’s.

The crux:

Reflected sunlight—but reflecting from what?

That the sky is a matrix, in which the stars are openings, and that, upon the inner, concave surface of this celestial shell, the sun casts its light, even if the earth is between, no more blotted out in the middle by the intervening earth, than often to considerable degree is its light blotted out upon the moon during an eclipse of the moon, occupying no time in traveling the distance of the stars and back to this earth, because the stars are near, or because there is no velocity of light.

Suppose the Gegenschein could be a reflection of sunlight from anything at a distance less than the distance of the stars. It would have parallax against its background of stars.

Observatory, 17-47:

“The Gegenschein has no parallax.”

At the meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society, Jan. 11, 1878, was read a paper by W. F. Denning. It was, by its implications, one of the most exciting documents in history. The subject was: “Suspected repetitions in meteor-showers.” Mr. Denning listed twenty-two radiants that lasted from three to four months each.

In the year 1799, Humboldt noticed that the paths of meteors, when parts of one display, led back to one point of common origin, or one point from which all the meteors had radiated. This is the radiant-point, or the radiant. When a radiant occurs under a constellation, the meteors are named relatively. In the extraordinary meteoric display of November 13-14, 1833, there was a circumstance that was as extraordinary as the display itself: 83that, though this earth is supposed to rotate upon its axis, giving to the stars the appearance of revolving nightly, and supposed to revolve around the sun, so affecting the seeming motions of the stars, these meteors of November, 1833, began under the constellation Leo, and six hours later, though Leo had changed position in the sky, had changed with, and seemed still coming from, Leo.

There was no parallax along the great base line from Canada to Florida.

Then these meteors did come from Leo, or parallax, or absence of parallax, is meaningless.

The circumstance of precise position maintained under a moving constellation upon the night of Nov. 13-14, 1833, becomes insignificant relatively to Denning’s data of such synchronization with a duration of months. When a radiant-point remains under Leo or Lyra, night after night, month after month, it is either that something is shifting it, without parallax, in exact coincidence with a doubly shifting constellation, which is so unthinkable that Denning says, “I can not explain,” or that the constellation is the radiant point, in which case maintenance of precise position under it is unthinkable if it be far away—

That the stars are near.

Think of a ship, slowly sailing past a seacoast town, firing with smokeless powder, say. Shells from it burst before quite reaching the town, and all explosion-points are in line between the city and the ship, or are traceable to one such radiant. The bombardment continues. The ship moves slowly. Still all points of exploding shells are traceable to one point between the ship and the town. The bombardment goes on and goes on and goes on, and the ship is far from its first position. The point of exploding shells is still between the ship and the town. Wise men in the town say that the shells are not coming from the ship. They say this because formerly they had said that shells could not come from a ship. They reason: therefore shells are not coming from this ship. They are asked how, then, the point of explosion could so shift exactly in line with the moving ship. If there be a W. F. Denning among them, he will say, “I can not explain.” But the other wise men will be like 84Prof. Moulton, for instance. In his books, Prof. Moulton writes a great deal upon the subject of meteors, but he does not mention the meteors that, for months at a time, appear between observers and a shifting constellation.

There are other considerations. The shells are heard to explode. So then they explode near the town. But there is something the matter with that smokeless powder aboard ship: very feeble projectile-force, because also must the shells be exploding near the ship, or the radiant point would not have the same background, as seen from different parts of the town. Then, in this town, inhabitants, provided they be not wise men, will conclude that, if the explosion-point is near the town, and is also near the ship, the ship is near the town—

Leo and Lyra and Andromeda—argosies that sail the sky and that bombard this earth—and that they are not far away.

And some of us there may be who, instead of trying to speculate upon an unthinkable remoteness, will suffer a sensitiveness to proximity instead; enter a new revolt against a black encompassment that glitters with a light beyond, and wonder what exists in a brilliant environment not far away—and a new anguish for hyperæsthesia upon this earth: a suffocating consciousness of the pressure of the stars.

The Sickle of Leo, from which come the Leonids, gleams like a great question-mark in the sky.

The answer—

But God knows what the answer to anything is.

Perhaps it is that the stars are very close indeed.

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CHAPTER TWELVE

We try to have independent expressions. Accept that it is not distance that has held the stars in unchanging position, if occasional, abrupt change of position has been seen at the distance of the stars, and it is implied that the not enormously distant stars are all about equally far away from this earth, or some would be greatly particularized, and that this earth does not move in an orbit, or stars would be seasonally particularized, but would not be, if the stars, in one composition revolve; also if this earth be relatively close to all stars, if many changes of magnitude and of appearance and disappearance have been seen at the distance of the stars, and, if, in the revolutions of the stars, they do not swirl in displacements as bewildering as a blizzard of luminous snowflakes, and if no state of inter-repulsion can be thought of, especially as many stars merge into others, this composition is a substantial, concave formation, or shell-like enclosure in which stars are points. So many of the expressions in the preceding chapter imply others, or all others. However, we have tried to have independent expressions. Of course we realize that the supposed difference between inductive and deductive reasoning is a false demarcation; nevertheless we feel that deductions piled upon other deductions are only architecture, and a great deal in this book expresses the notion that architecture should be kept in its own place. Our general expression is not that there should be no architecture and no mathematics in astronomy, or neo-astronomy; not that there should be no poetry in biology; no chemistry in physiology—but that “pure” architecture or “pure” mathematics, biology, chemistry has its own field, even though each is inextricably bound up with all the other aspects of being. So of course the very thing that we object to in its extreme manifestations is essential to us in some degree, and the deductive is findable somewhere in every one of 86our inductions, and we are not insensible to what we think is the gracefulness of some of the converging lines of our own constructions. We are not revolting against aspects, but against emphases and intrusions.

This first part of our work is what we consider neo-astronomic; and now to show that we have no rabidity against the mathematical except when over-emphasized, or mis-applied, our language is that all expressions so far developed are to us of about 50% acceptability. A far greater attempted independence is coming, a second part of this work, considering phenomena so different that, if we term the first part of our explorations “neo-astronomic,” even some other term, by which to designate the field of the second part, will have to be thought of, and the word “extra-geographic” seems best for it. If in these two fields, our at least temporary conclusions be the same, we shall be impressed, in spite of all our cynicisms as to “agreements.”

Neo-astronomy:

This supposed solar-system—an egg-like organism that is shelled away from external light and life—this central and stationary earth its nucleus—around it a revolving shell, in which the stars are pores, or functioning channels, through some of which spray irradiating fountains said to be “meteoric,” but perhaps electric—in which the nebulæ are translucent patches, and in which the many dark parts are areas of opaque, structural substance—and that the stars are not trillions nor even millions of miles away—with proportional reductions of all internal distances, so that the planets are not millions, nor even hundreds of thousands of miles away.

We conceive of the variability of the stars and the nebulæ in terms of the incidence of external light upon a revolving shell, and fluctuating passage through light-admitting points and parts. We conceive of all things being rhythmic, so, if stars be pores in a substance, that matrix must be subject to some changes, which may be of different periodicities in different regions. There may be local vortices in the most rigid substance, and so stars, or pores, might revolve around one another, but our tendency is to think that if light companions there be to some stars, they are reflections of light, passing through channels, upon surrounding 87substance, flickering from one position to another in the small undulations of this environment. So there may be other displacements, differences of magnitude, new openings and closings in a substance that is not absolutely rigid. So “proper motion” might be accounted for, but my own preference is to think, as to such stars as 1830 Groombridge and Barnard’s “runaway star” that they are planets—also that some of the comets, especially the tailless comets, some of which have been seen to obscure stars, so that evidently they are not wisps of highly attenuated matter, are planets, all of them not conventionally recognized as planets, because of eccentricity and remoteness from the ecliptic, two departures, however, that many of the minor planets make to great degree. If some of these bodies be planets, the irregularities of some of them are consistent with the irregularities of Jupiter’s satellites.

I suggest that a combination of the Ptolemaic and the Tychonic doctrines is in good accord with all the phenomena that we have considered, and with all planetary motions that we have had no occasion to pay much attention to—that the sun, carrying Mercury and Venus with him, revolves at a distance of a few thousand miles, or a few tens of thousands of miles, in a rising and falling spiral around this virtually, but not absolutely, stationary earth, which, according to modern investigations is more top-shaped than spherical; moon, a few thousand miles away, revolving around this nucleus; and the exterior planets not only revolving around this whole central arrangement, but approaching and receding, in loops, also, quite as they seem to the remotest of them preposterously near, according to conventional “determinations.”

So all the phenomena of the skies may be explained. But all were explained in another way by Copernicus, in another way by Ptolemy, and in still another way by Tycho Brahé. One supposes that there are other ways. If there be a distant object, and, if one school of wisemen can by their reasoning processes excellently demonstrate that it is a tree, another school positively determine that it is a house, and other investigators of the highest authoritativeness variously find and prove that it is a cloud or a buffalo or a geranium, why then, their reasoning 88processes may be admired but not trusted. Right at the heart of our opposition, and right at the heart of our own expressions, is the fatality that there is no reasoning, no logic, no explanation resembling the illusions in the vainglories of common suppositions. There is only the process of correlating to, or organizing or systematizing around, something that is arbitrarily taken for a base, or a dominant doctrine, or a major premise—the process of assimilating with something else, making agreement with something else, or interpreting in terms of something else, which supposed base is never itself final, but was originally an assimilation with still something else.

I typify the result of all examinations of all principles or laws or dominant thoughts, scientific, philosophic, or theologic, in what we find in examining the pronouncement that motion follows the least resistance:

That motion follows least resistance.

How are we to identify least resistance?

If motion follows it.

Then motion goes where motion goes.

If nothing can be positively distinguished from anything else there can be no positive logic, which is attempted positive distinguishment. Consider the popular “base” that Capital is tyranny, and almost utmost wickedness, and that Labor is pure and idealistic. But one’s labor is one’s capital, and capital that is not working is in no sense implicated in this conflict.

Nevertheless we now give up our early suspicion that our whole existence is a leper of the skies, quaking and cringing through space, having the isolation that astronomers suppose, because other celestial forms of being fly from infection—

That, if shelled away from external light and life, it is so surrounded and so protected in the same cause and functioning as that of similarly encompassed forms subsidiary to it—that our existence is super-embryonic.

Darkness of night and of lives and of thoughts—super-uterine entombment. Blackness of the unborn, quasi-illumined periodically by the little sun, which is not light, but less dark.

Then we think of an organism that needs no base, and needs nothing of finality, nor of special guidance to any part local to 89it, because all parts partake of the pre-determined development of the whole. Consequently our spleens subside, and our frequently unmannerly derisions are hushed by recognitions—that all organizations of thought must be baseless in themselves, and of course be not final, or they could not change, and must bear within themselves those elements that will, in time, destroy them—that seeming solidities that pass away, in phantom-successions, are functionaries relatively to their periods, and express the passage from phase to phase of all things embryonic.

So it is that one who searches for fundamentals comes to bifurcations; never to a base; only to a quandary. In our own field, let there be any acceptable finding. It indicates that the earth moves around the sun. Just as truly it indicates that the sun moves around the earth. What is it that determines which will be accepted, hypnotically blinding the faithful to the other aspect? Our own expression is upon Development as serial reactions to successive Dominants. Let the dominant spirit of an era required that this earth be remote and isolated; Keplerism will support it: let the dominant change to a spirit of expansion, which would be impossible under such remoteness and isolation; Keplerism will support, or will not especially oppose, the new dominant. This is the essential process of embryonic growth, by which the same protoplasmic substance responds differently in different phases.

But I do not think that all data are so plastic. There are some that will not assimilate with a prevailing doctrine. They can have no effect upon an arbitrary system of thought, or a system sub-consciously induced, in its time of dominance: they will simply be disregarded.

We have reached our catalog of the sights and the sounds to which all that we have so far considered is merely introductory. For them there are either no conventional explanations or poor insufficiencies half-heartedly offered. Our data are glimpses of an epoch that is approaching with far-away explosions. It is vibrating on its edges with the tread of distant space-armies. Already it has pictured in the sky visions that signify new excitements, even now lapping over into the affairs of a self-disgusted, played-out hermitage.

90We assemble the data. Unhappily, we shall be unable to resist the temptation to reason and theorize. May Super-embryology have mercy upon our own syllogisms. We consider that we are entitled to at least 13 pages of gross and stupid errors. After that we shall have to explain.

91