PART I

7

NEW LANDS CHAPTER ONE

Lands in the sky—

That they are nearby—

That they do not move.

I take for a principle that all being is the infinitely serial, and that whatever has been will, with differences of particulars, be again—

The last quarter of the fifteenth century—land to the west!

This first quarter of the twentieth century—we shall have revelations.

There will be data. There will be many. Behind this book, unpublished collectively, or held as constituting its reserve forces, there are other hundreds of data, but independently I take for a principle that all existence is a flux and a re-flux, by which periods of expansion follow periods of contraction; that few men can even think widely when times are narrow times, but that human constrictions can not repress extensions of thoughts and lives and enterprise and dominion when times are wider times—so then that the pageantry of foreign coasts that was revealed behind blank horizons after the year 1492, can not be, in the course of development, the only astounding denial of seeming vacancy—that the spirit, or the animation, and the stimulations and the needs of the fifteenth century are all appearing again, and that requital may appear again—

Aftermath of war, as in the year 1492: demands for readjustments; crowded and restless populations, revolts against limitations, intolerable restrictions against emigrations. The young man is no longer urged, or is no longer much inclined, to go westward. He will, or must, go somewhere. If directions alone no longer invite him, he may hear invitation in dimensions. There are 8many persons, who have not investigated for themselves, who think that both poles of this earth have been discovered. There are too many women traveling luxuriously in “Darkest Africa.” Eskimos of Disco, Greenland, are publishing a newspaper. There must be outlet, or there will be explosion—

Outlet and invitation and opportunity—

San Salvadors of the Sky—a Plymouth Rock that hangs in the heavens of Servia—a foreign coast from which storms have brought materials to the city of Birmingham, England.

Or the mentally freezing, or dying, will tighten their prohibitions, and the chill of their censorships will contract, to extinction, our lives, which, without sin, represent matter deprived of motion. Their ideal is Death, or approximate death, warmed over occasionally only enough to fringe with uniform, decorous icicles—from which there will be no escape, if, for the living and sinful and adventurous there be not San Salvadors somewhere else, a Plymouth Rock of reversed significance, coasts of sky-continents.

But every consciousness that we have of needs, and all hosts, departments, and sub-divisions of data that indicate the possible requital of needs are opposed—not by the orthodoxy of the common Puritans, but by the Puritans of Science, and their austere, disheartening, dried or frozen orthodoxy.

Islands of space—see Sci. Amer., vol. this and p. that—accounts from the Repts. of the Brit. Assoc. for the Ad. of Sci.—Nature etc.—except for an occasional lapse, our sources of data will not be sneered at. As to our interpretations, I consider them, myself, more as suggestions and gropings and stimuli. Islands of space and the rivers and the oceans of an extra-geography—

Stay and let salvation damn you—or straddle an auroral beam and paddle it from Rigel to Betelgeuse. If there be no accepting that there are such rivers and oceans beyond this earth, stay and travel upon steamships with schedules that can be depended upon, food so well cooked and well served, comfort looked after so carefully—or some day board the thing that was seen over the city of Marseilles, Aug. 19, 1887, and ride on that, bearing down upon the moon, giving up for lost, escaping collision by the swirl of a current that was never heard of before.

There are, or there are not, nearby cities of foreign existences. 9They have, or they have not, been seen, by reflection, in the skies, of Sweden and Alaska. As one will. Whether acceptable, or too preposterous to be thought of, our data are of rabbles of living things that have been seen in the sky; also of processions of military beings—monsters that live in the sky and die in the sky, and spatter this earth with their red life-fluids—ships from other worlds that have been seen by millions of the inhabitants of this earth, exploring, night after night, in the sky of France, England, New England, and Canada—signals from the moon, which, according to notable indications, may not be so far from this earth as New York is from London—definitely reported and, in some instances, multitudinously witnessed, events that have been disregarded by our opposition—

A scientific priestcraft—

“Thou shalt not!” is crystallized in its frozen textbooks.

I have data upon data upon data of new lands that are not far away. I hold out expectations and the materials of new hopes and new despairs and new triumphs and new tragedies. I hold out my hands to point to the sky—there is a hierarchy that utters me manacles, I think—there is a dominant force that pronounces prisons that have dogmas for walls for such thoughts. It binds its formulas around all attempting extensions.

But sounds have been heard in the sky. They have been heard, and it is not possible to destroy the records of them. They have been heard. In their repetitions and regularities of series and intervals, we shall recognize perhaps interpretable language. Columns of clouds, different-colored by sunset, have vibrated to the artillery of other worlds like the strings of a cosmic harp, and I conceive of no buzzing of insects that can forever divert attention from such dramatic reverberations. Language has shone upon the dark parts of the moon: luminous exclamations that have fluttered in the lunar crater Copernicus; the eloquence of the starlike light in Aristarchus; hymns that have been chanted in lights and shades upon Linné; the wilder, luminous music in Plato—

But not a sound that has been heard in the sky, not a thing that has fallen from the sky, not a thing that “should not be,” but that has nevertheless been seen in the sky can we, with 10any sense of freedom, investigate, until first we find out about the incubus that in the past has suffocated even speculation. I shall find out for myself: anybody who cares to may find out with me. A ship from a foreign world does, or does not, sail in the sky of this earth. It is in accordance with observations by hundreds of thousands of witnesses that this event has taken place, and, if the time be when aeronautics upon this earth is of small development, that is an important circumstance to consider—but there is suffocation upon the whole occurrence and every one of its circumstances. Nobody can give good attention to the data, if diverting his mind is consciousness, altogether respectful, of the scientists who say that there are no other physical worlds except planets, millions of miles away, distances that conceivable vessels could not traverse. I should like to let loose, in an opening bombardment, the data of the little black stones of Birmingham, which, time after time, in a period of eleven years, fell obviously from a fixed point in the sky, but such a release, now, would be wasted. It will have to be prepared for. Now each one would say to himself that there are no such fixed points in the sky. Why not? Because astronomers say that there are not.

But there is something else that is implied. Implied is the general supposition that the science of astronomy represents all that is most accurate, most exacting, painstaking, semi-religious in human thought, and is therefore authoritative.

Anybody who has not been through what I’ve been through, in investigating this subject, would ask what are the bases and what is the consistency of the science of astronomy. The miserable, though at times amusing, confusions of thought that I find in this field of supposed research word my inquiry differently—what of dignity, or even of decency, is in it?

Phantom dogmas, with their tails clutching at vacancies, are coiled around our data.

Serpents of pseudo-thought are stifling history.

They are squeezing “Thou shalt not!” upon Development.

New Lands—and the horrors and lights, explosions and music of them; rabbles of hellhounds and the march of military angels. But they are Promised Lands, and first must we traverse a desert. 11There is ahead of us a waste of parallaxes and spectrograms and triangulations. It may be weary going through a waste of astronomic determinations, but that depends—

If, out of a dreary, academic zenith shower betrayals of frailty, folly, and falsification, they will be manna to our malices—

Or sterile demonstrations be warmed by our cheerful cynicisms into delicious little lies—blossoms and fruits of unexpected oases—

Rocks to strike with our suspicions—and the gush of exposures foaming with new implications.

Tyrants, dragons, giants—and, if all be dispatched with the skill and the might and the triumph over awful odds of the hero who himself tells his story—

I hear three yells from some hitherto undiscovered, grotesque critter at the very entrance of the desert.

12

CHAPTER TWO

“Prediction Confirmed!”

“Another Verification!”

“A Third Verification of Prediction!”

Three times, in spite of its long-established sobriety, the Journal of the Franklin Institute, vols. 106 and 107, reels with an astronomer’s exhilarations. He might exult and indulge himself, and that would be no affair of ours, and, in fact, we’d like to see everybody happy, perhaps, but it is out of these three chanticleerities by Prof. Pliny Chase that we materialize our opinion that, so far as methods and strategies are concerned, no particular differences can be noted between astrologers and astronomers, and that both represent engulfment in Dark Ages. Lord Bacon pointed out that the astrologers had squirmed into prestige and emolument by shooting at marks, disregarding their misses, and recording their hits with unseemly advertisement. When, in August, 1878, Prof. Swift and Prof. Watson said that, during an eclipse of the sun, they had seen two luminous bodies that might be planets between Mercury and the sun, Prof. Chase announced that, five years before, he had made a prediction, and that it had been confirmed by the positions of these bodies. Three times, in capital letters, he screamed, or announced, according to one’s sensitiveness, or prejudices, that the “new planets” were in the exact positions of his calculations. Prof. Chase wrote that, before his time, there had been two great instances of astronomic calculation confirmed: the discovery of Neptune and the discovery of “the asteroidal belt,” a claim that is disingenuously worded. If by mathematical principles, or by any other definite principles, there has ever been one great, or little, instance of astronomic discovery by means of calculations, confusion must destroy us, in the introductory position that we take, 13or expose our irresponsibility, and vitiate all that follows: that our data are oppressed by a tyranny of false announcements; that there never has been an astronomic discovery other than the observational or the accidental.

In The Story of the Heavens, Sir Robert Ball’s opinion of the discovery of Neptune is that it is a triumph unparalleled in the annals of science. He lavishes—the great astronomer Leverrier, buried for months in profound meditations—the dramatic moment—Leverrier rises from his calculations and points to the sky—“Lo!” there a new planet is found.

My desire is not so much to agonize over the single fraudulencies or delusions, as to typify the means by which the science of Astronomy has established and maintained itself:

According to Leverrier, there was a planet external to Uranus; according to Hansen, there were two; according to Airy, “doubtful if there were one.”

One planet was found—so calculated Leverrier, in his profound meditations. Suppose two had been found—confirmation of the brilliant computations by Hansen. None—the opinion of the great astronomer, Sir George Airy.

Leverrier calculated that the hypothetic planet was at a distance from the sun, within the limits of 35 and 37.9 times this earth’s distance from the sun. The new planet was found in a position said to be 30 times this earth’s distance from the sun. The discrepancy was so great that, in the United States, astronomers refused to accept that Neptune had been discovered by means of calculation: see such publications as the American Journal of Science, of the period. Upon August 29, 1849, Dr. Babinet read, to the French Academy, a paper in which he showed that, by the observations of three years, the revolution of Neptune would have to be placed at 165 years. Between the limits of 207 and 233 years was the period that Leverrier had calculated. Simultaneously, in England, Adams had calculated. Upon Sept. 2, 1846, after he had, for at least a month, been charting the stars in the region toward which Adams had pointed, Prof. Challis wrote to Sir George Airy that this work would occupy his time for three more months. This indicates the extent of the region toward which Adams had pointed.

14The discovery of the asteroids, or in Prof. Chase’s not very careful language, the discovery of the “asteroidal belt as deduced from Bode’s Law”:

We learn that Baron Von Zach had formed a society of twenty-four astronomers to search, in accordance with Bode’s Law, for “a planet”—and not “a group,” not “an asteroidal belt”—between Jupiter and Mars. The astronomers had organized, dividing the zodiac into twenty-four zones, assigning each zone to an astronomer. They searched. They found not one asteroid. Seven or eight hundred are now known.

Philosophical Magazine, 12-62:

That Piazzi, the discoverer of the first asteroid, had not been searching for a hypothetic body, as deduced from Bode’s Law, but, upon an investigation of his own, had been charting stars in the constellation Taurus, night of Jan. 1, 1801. He noticed a light that he thought had moved, and, with his mind a blank, so far as asteroids and brilliant deductions were concerned, announced that he had discovered a comet.

As an instance of the crafty way in which some astronomers now tell the story, see Sir Robert Ball’s Story of the Heavens, p. 230:

The organization of the astronomers of Lilienthal, but never a hint that Piazzi was not one of them—“the search for a small planet was soon rewarded by a success that has rendered the evening of the first day of the nineteenth century memorable in astronomy.” Ball tells of Piazzi’s charting of the stars, and makes it appear that Piazzi had charted stars as a means of finding asteroids deductively, rewarded soon by success, whereas Piazzi had never heard of such a search, and did not know an asteroid when he saw one. “This laborious and accomplished astronomer had organized an ingenious system of exploring the heavens, which was eminently calculated to discriminate a planet among the starry host ... at length he was rewarded by a success which amply compensated him for all his toil.”

Prof. Chase—these two great instances not of mere discovery, but of discovery by means of calculation according to him—now the subject of his supposition that he, too, could calculate triumphantly—the verification depended upon the accuracy of 15Prof. Swift and Prof. Watson in recording the positions of the bodies that they had announced—

Sidereal Messenger, 6-84:

Prof. Colbert, Superintendent of Dearborn Observatory, leader of the party of which Prof. Swift was a member, says that the observations by Swift and Watson agreed, because Swift had made his observations agree with Watson’s. The accusation is not that Swift had falsely announced a discovery of two unknown bodies, but that his precise determining of positions had occurred after Watson’s determinations had been published.

Popular Astronomy, 7-13:

Prof. Asaph Hall writes that, several days after the eclipse, Prof. Watson told him that he had seen “a” luminous body near the sun, and that his declaration that he had seen two unknown bodies was not made until after Swift had been heard from.

Perched upon two delusions, Prof. Chase crowed his false raptures. The unknown bodies, whether they ever had been in the orbit of his calculations or not, were never seen again.

So it is our expression that hosts of astronomers calculate, and calculation-mad, calculate and calculate and calculate, and that, when one of them does point within 600,000,000 miles (by conventional measurements) of something that is found, he is the Leverrier of the text books; that the others are the Prof. Chases not of the text books.

As to most of us, the symbols of the infinitesimal calculus humble independent thinking into the conviction that used to be enforced by drops of blood from a statue. In the farrago and conflicts of daily lives, it is relief to feel such a rapport with finality, in a religious sense, or in a mathematical sense. So then, if the seeming of exactness in Astronomy be either infamously, or carelessly and laughingly, brought about by the connivances of which Swift and Watson were accused, and if the prestige of Astronomy be founded upon nothing but huge capital letters and exclamation points, or upon the disproportionality of balancing one Leverrier against hundreds of Chases, it may not be better that we should know this, if then to those of us who, in the religious sense, have nothing to depend upon, comes deprivation of even this last, lingering seeming of foundation, 16or seeming existence of exactness and realness, somewhere—

Except—that, if there be nearby lands in the sky and beings from foreign worlds that visit this earth, that is a great subject, and the trash that is clogging an epoch must be cleared away.

We have had a little sermon upon the insecurity of human triumphs, and, having brought it to a climax, now seems to be the time to stop; but there is still an involved “triumph” and I’d not like to have inefficiency, as well as probably everything else, charged against us—

The Discovery of Uranus.

We mention this stimulus to the text book writers’ ecstasies, because out of phenomena of the planet Uranus, the “Neptune-triumph” developed. For Richard Proctor’s reasons for arguing that this discovery was not accidental, see Old and New Astronomy, p. 646. Philosophical Transactions, 71-492—a paper by Herschel—“An account of a comet discovered on March 13, 1781.” A year went by, and not an astronomer in the world knew a new planet when he saw one: then Lexell did find out that the supposed comet was a planet.

Statues from which used to drip the life-blood of a parasitic cult—

Structures of parabolas from which bleed equations—

As we go along we shall develop the acceptance that astronomers might as well try to squeeze blood from images as to try to seduce symbols into conclusions, because applicable mathematics has no more to do with planetary inter-actions than have statues of saints. If this denial that the calculi have place in gravitational astronomy be accepted, the astronomers lose their supposed god; they become an unfocussed priesthood; the stamina of their arrogance wilts. We begin with the next to the simplest problem in celestial mechanics: that is the formulation of the inter-actions of the sun and the moon and this earth. In the highest of mathematics, final, sacred mathematics, can this next to the simplest problem in so-called mathematical astronomy be solved?

It can not be solved.

Every now and then, somebody announces that he has solved the Problem of the Three Bodies, but it is always an incomplete, 17or impressionistic, demonstration, compounded of abstractions, and ignoring the conditions of bodies in space. Over and over we shall find vacancy under supposed achievements; elaborate structures that are pretensions without foundation. Here we learn that astronomers can not formulate the inter-actions of three bodies in space, but calculate anyway, and publish what they call the formula of a planet that is inter-acting with a thousand other bodies. They explain. It will be one of our most lasting impressions of astronomers: they explain and explain and explain. The astronomers explain that, though in finer terms, the mutual effects of three planets can not be determined, so dominant is the power of the sun that all other effects are negligible.

Before the discovery of Uranus, there was no way by which the miracles of the astro-magicians could be tested. They said that their formulas worked out, and external inquiry was panic-stricken at the mention of a formula. But Uranus was discovered, and the magicians were called upon to calculate his path. They did calculate, and, if Uranus had moved in a regular path, I do not mean to say that astronomers or college boys have no mathematics by which to determine anything so simple.

They computed the orbit of Uranus.

He went somewhere else.

They explained. They computed some more. They went on explaining and computing, year in and year out, and the planet Uranus kept on going somewhere else. Then they conceived of a powerful perturbing force beyond Uranus—so then that at the distance of Uranus the sun is not so dominant—in which case the effects of Saturn upon Uranus and Uranus upon Saturn are not so negligible—on through complexes of inter-actions that infinitely intensify by cumulativeness into a black outlook for the whole brilliant system. The palæo-astronomers calculated, and for more than fifty years pointed variously at the sky. Finally two of them, of course agreeing upon the general background of Uranus, pointed within distances that are conventionally supposed to have been about six hundred millions of miles of Neptune, and now it is religiously, if not insolently, said that the discovery of Neptune was not accidental—

18That the test of that which is not accidental is ability to do it again—

That it is within the power of anybody, who does not know a hyperbola from a cosine, to find out whether the astronomers are led by a cloud of rubbish by day and a pillar of bosh by night—

If, by the magic of his mathematics, any astronomer could have pointed to the position of Neptune, let him point to the planet past Neptune. According to the same reasoning by which a planet past Uranus was supposed to be, a Trans-Neptunian planet may be supposed to be. Neptune shows perturbations similar to those of Uranus.

According to Prof. Todd there is such a planet, and it revolves around the sun once in 375 years. There are two, according to Prof. Forbes, one revolving once in 1,000 years, and the other once in 5,000 years. See Macpherson’s A Century’s Progress in Astronomy. It exists, according to Dr. Eric Doolittle, and revolves once in 283 years (Sci. Amer., 122-641). According to Mr. Hind it revolves once in 1,600 years (Smithson. Miscell. Cols., 20-20).

So then we have found out some things, and, relatively to the oppressions that we felt from our opposition, they are reassuring. But also are they depressing. Because, if, in this existence of ours, there is no prestige higher than that of astronomic science, and, if that seeming of substantial renown has been achieved by a composition of bubbles, what of anything like soundness must there be to all lesser reputes and achievements?

Let three bodies inter-act. There is no calculus by which their inter-actions can be formulated. But there are a thousand inter-acting bodies in this solar system—or supposed solar system—and we find that the highest prestige in our existence is built upon the tangled assertions that there are magicians who can compute in a thousand quantities, though they can not compute in three.

Then all other so-called human triumphs, or moderate successes, products of anybody’s reasoning processes and labors—and what are they, if higher than them all, more academic, austere, rigorous, exact are the methods and the processes of the astronomers? 19What can be thought of our whole existence, its nature and its destiny?

That our existence, a thing within one solar system, or supposed solar system, is a stricken thing that is mewling through space, shocking able-minded, healthy systems with the sores on its sun, its ghastly moons, its civilizations that are all broken out with sciences; a celestial leper, holding out doddering expanses into which charitable systems drop golden comets? If it be the leprous thing that our findings seem to indicate, there is no encouragement for us to go on. We can not discover: we can only betray new symptoms. If I be a part of such a stricken thing, I know of nothing but sickness and sores and rags to reason with: my data will be postules; my interpretations will be inflammations—

20

CHAPTER THREE

Southern plantations and the woolly heads of negroes pounding the ground—cries in northern regions and round white faces turned to the sky—fiery globes in the sky—a study in black, white, and golden formations in one general glow. Upon the night of November 13-14, 1833, occurred the most sensational celestial spectacle of the nineteenth century: for six hours fiery meteors gushed from the heavens, and were visible along the whole Atlantic coast of the United States.

One supposes that astronomers do not pound the ground with their heads, and presumably they do not screech, but they have feelings just the same. They itched. Here was something to formulate. When he hears of something new and unquestionable in the sky, an astronomer is diseased with ill-suppressed equations. Symbols persecute him for expression. His is the frenzy of someone who would stop automobiles, railroad trains, bicycles, all things, to measure them; run, with a yardstick, after sparrows, flies, all persons passing his door. This is supposed to be scientific, but it can be monomaniac. Very likely the distress and the necessity of Prof. Olmstead were keenest. He was the first to formulate. He “demonstrated” that these meteors, known as the Leonids, revolved around the sun once in six months.

They didn’t.

Then Prof. Newton “demonstrated” that the “real” period was thirty-three and a quarter years. But this was done empirically, and that is not divine, nor even aristocratic, and the thing would have to be done rationally, or mathematically, by someone, because, if there be not mathematical treatment, in gravitational terms, of such phenomena, astronomers are in reduced circumstances. It was Dr. Adams, who, emboldened with his experience in not having to point anywhere near Neptune, but nevertheless being acclaimed by all patriotic Englishmen as the real discoverer of Neptune, mathematically “confirmed” Prof. 21Newton’s “findings.” Dr. Adams predicted that the Leonids would return in November, 1866 and in November, 1899, occupying several years, upon each occasion, in passing a point in this earth’s orbit.

There were meteors upon the night of Nov. 13-14, 1866. They were plentiful. They often are in the middle of November. They no more resembled the spectacle of 1833 than an ordinary shower resembles a cloudburst. But the “demonstration” required that there should be an equal display, or, according to some aspects, a greater display, upon the corresponding night of the next year. There was a display, the next year; but it was in the sky of the United States, and was not seen in England. Another occurrence nothing like that of 1833 was reported from the United States.

By conventional theory, this earth was in a vast, wide stream of meteors, the earth revolving so as to expose successive parts to bombardment. So keenly did Richard Proctor visualize the earth so immersed and so bombarded, that, when nothing was seen in England, he explained. He spent most of his life explaining. In the Student, 2-254, he wrote: “Had the morning of November 14, 1867 been clear in England, we should have seen the commencement of the display, but not its more brilliant part.”

We have had some experience with the “triumphs” of astronomers: we have some suspicions as to their greatly advertised accuracy. We shall find out for ourselves whether the morning of Nov. 14, 1867 was clear enough in England or not. We suspect that it was a charming morning, in England—

Monthly Notices, R. A. S. 28-32:

Report by E. J. Lowe, Highfield House, night of Nov. 13-14, 1867:

“Clear at 1.10 A. M.; high, thin cumuli, at 2 A. M., but sky not covered until 3.10 A. M., and the moon’s place visible until 3.55 A. M.; sky not overcast until 5.50 A. M.”

The determination of the orbital period of thirty-three years and a quarter, but with appearances of a period of thirty-three years, was arrived at by Prof. Newton by searching old records, finding that, in an intersection-period of thirty-three years, there 22had been extraordinary meteoric displays, from the year 902 A.D. to the year 1833 A.D. He reminds me of an investigator who searched old records for appearances of Halley’s comet, and found something that he identified as Halley’s comet, exactly on time, every seventy-five years, back to times of the Roman Empire. See the Edinburgh Review, vol. 66. It seems that he did not know that orthodoxy does not attribute exactly a seventy-five year period to Halley’s comet. He got what he went looking for, anyway. I have no disposition for us to enjoy ourselves at Prof. Newton’s expense, because, surely enough, his method, if regarded as only experimental, or tentative, is legitimate enough, though one does suspect him of very loose behavior in his picking and choosing. But Dr. Adams announced that, upon mathematical grounds, he had arrived at the same conclusion.

The test:

The next return of the Leonids were predicted for November, 1899.

Memoirs of the British Astronomical Association, 9-6:

“No meteoric event ever before aroused such widespread interest, or so grievously disappointed anticipation.”

There were no Leonids in November, 1899.

It was explained. They would be seen next year.

There were no Leonids in November, 1900.

It was explained. They would be seen next year.

No Leonids.

Vaunt and inflation and parade of the symbols of the infinitesimal calculus; the pomp of vectors, and the hush that surrounds quaternions: but when an axis of co-ordinates loses its rectitude, in the service of a questionable selection, disciplined symbols become a rabble. The Most High of Mathematics—and one of his supposed prophets points to the sky. Nowhere near where he points, something is found. He points to a date—nothing happens.

Prof. Serviss, in Astronomy in a Nutshell, explains. He explains that the Leonids did not appear, when they “should” have appeared, because Jupiter and Saturn had altered their orbits.

Back in the times of the Crusades, and nothing was disturbing 23the Leonids—and if you’re stronger for dates than I am, think of some more dates, and nothing was altering the orbit of the Leonids—discovery of America, and the Spanish Armada, in 1588, which, by some freak, I always remember, and no effects by Jupiter and Saturn—French Revolution and on to the year 1866, and still nothing the matter with the Leonids—but, once removed from “discovery” and “identification,” and that’s the end of their period, diverted by Jupiter and Saturn, old things that had been up in the sky at least as long as they had been. If we’re going to accept the calculi at all, the calculus of probabilities must have a hearing. My own opinion, based upon reading many accounts of November meteors, is that decidedly the display of 1833 did not repeat in 1866: that a false priest sinned and that an equally false highpriest gave him sanction.

The tragedy goes comically on. I feel that, to all good Neo-astronomers, I can recommend the following serenity from an astronomer who was unperturbed by what happened to his science, in November, 1899, and some more Novembers—

Bryant, A History of Astronomy, p. 252:

That the meteoric display of 1899 had failed to appear—“as had been predicted by Dr. Downing and Dr. Johnstone Stoney.”

One starts to enjoy this disguisement, thinking of virtually all the astronomers in the world who had predicted the return of the Leonids, and the finding, by Bryant, of two who had not, and his recording only the opinion of these two, coloring so as to look like another triumph—but we may thank our sorely stimulated suspiciousness for still richer enjoyment—

That even these two said no such saving thing—

Nature, Nov. 9, 1899:

Dr. Downing and Dr. Stoney, instead of predicting failure of the Leonids to appear, advise watch for them several hours later than had been calculated.

I conceive of the astronomers’ fictitious paradise as malarchitectural with corrupted equations, and paved with rotten symbols. Seeming pure, white fountains of formal vanities—boasts that are gushing from decomposed triumphs. We shall find their furnishings shabby with tarnished comets. We turn expectantly to the subject of comets; or we turn cynically to 24the subject. We turn maliciously to the subject of comets. Nevertheless, threading the insecurities of our various feelings, is a motif that is the steady essence of Neo-astronomy:

That, in celestial phenomena, as well as in all other fields of research, the irregular, or the unformulable, or the uncapturable, is present in at least equal representation with the uniform: that, given any clear, definite, seemingly unvarying thing in the heavens, co-existently is something of wantonness or irresponsibility, bizarre and incredible, according to the standards of purists—that the science of Astronomy concerns itself with only one aspect of existence, because of course there can be no science of the obverse phenomena—which is good excuse for so enormously disregarding, if we must have the idea that there are real sciences, but which shows the hopelessness of positively attempting.

The story of the Comets, as not told in Mr. Chambers’ book of that title is almost unparalleled in the annals of humiliation. When a comet is predicted to return, that means faith in the Law of Gravitation. It is Newtonism that comets, as well as planets, obey the Law of Gravitation, and move in one of the conic sections. When a comet does not return when it “should,” there is no refuge for an astronomer to say that planets perturbed it, because one will ask why he did not include such factors in his calculations, if these phenomena be subject to mathematical treatment. In his book, Mr. Chambers avoids, or indicates that he never heard of, a great deal that will receive cordiality from us, but he does publish a list of predicted comets that did not return. Writing, in 1909, he mentions others for which he had hopes:

Brook’s First Periodic Comet (1886, IV)—“We must see what the years 1909 and 1910 bring forth.” This is pretty indefinite anticipation—however, nothing was brought forth, according to Monthly Notices, R. A. S., 1909 and 1910: the Brooks’ comet that is recorded is Brooks’, 1889. Giacobini’s Second Periodic Comet (1900, III)—not seen in 1907—“so we shall not have a chance of knowing more about it until 1914.” No more known about it in 1914. Borelly’s Comet (1905, II)—“Its 25expected return, in 1911 or 1912, will be awaited with interest.” This is pretty indefinite awaiting: it is now said that this comet did return upon Sept. 19, 1911. Denning’s Second Periodic Comet (1894, I)—expected, in 1909, but not seen up to Mr. Chambers’ time of writing—no mention in Monthly Notices. Swift’s Comet, of Nov. 20, 1894—“must be regarded as lost, unless it should be found in December, 1912.” No mention of it in Monthly Notices.

Three comets were predicted to return in 1913—not one of them returned (Monthly Notices, 74-326).

Once upon a time, armed with some of the best and latest cynicisms, I was hunting for prey in the Magazine of Science, and came upon an account of a comet that was expected in the year 1848. I supposed that the thing had been positively predicted, and very likely failed to appear, and, for such common game, had no interest. But I came upon the spoor of disgrace, in the word “triumph”—“If it does come, it will afford another astronomical triumph” (Mag. of Sci., 1848-107). The astronomers had predicted the return of a great comet in the year 1848. In Monthly Notices, April, 1847, Mr. Hind says that the result of his calculations had satisfied him that the identification had been complete, and that, in all probability, “the comet must be very near.” Accepting Prof. Mädler’s determinations, he predicted that the comet would return to position nearest the sun, about the end of February, 1848.

No comet.

The astronomers explained. I don’t know what the mind of an astronomer looks like, but I think of a fizzle with excuses revolving around it. A writer in the American Journal of Science, 2-9-442, explains excellently. It seems that, when the comet failed to return, Mr. Barber, of Etwell, again went over the calculations. He found that, between the years 1556 and 1592, the familiar attractions of Jupiter and Saturn had diminished the comet’s period by 263 days, but that something else had wrought an effect that he set down positively at 751 days, with a resulting retardation of 488 days. This is magic that would petrify, with chagrin, the arteries of the hemorrhagicalest 26statue that ever convinced the faithful—reaching back through three centuries of inter-actions, which, without divine insight, are unimaginable when occurring in three seconds—

But there was no comet.

The astronomers explained. They went on calculating, and ten years later were still calculating. See Recreative Science, 1860-139. It would be heroic were it not mania. What was the matter with Mr. Barber, of Etwell, and the intellectual tentacles that he had thrust through centuries is not made clear in most of the contemporaneous accounts; but, in the year 1857, Mr. Hind published a pamphlet and explained. It seems that researches by Littrow had given new verification to a path that had been computed for the comet, and that nothing had been the matter with Mr. Barber, of Etwell, except his insufficiency of data, which had been corrected. Mr. Hind predicted. He pointed to the future, but he pointed like someone closing a thumb and spreading four fingers. Mr. Hind said that, according to Halley’s calculations, the comet would arrive in the summer of 1865. However, an acceleration of five years had been discovered, so that the time should be set down for the middle of August, 1860. However, according to Mr. Hind’s calculated orbit, the comet might return in the summer of 1864. However, allowing for acceleration, “the comet is found to be due early in August, 1858.”

Then Bomme calculated. He predicted that the comet would return upon August 2, 1858.

There was no comet.

The astronomers went on calculating. They predicted that the comet would return upon August 22, 1860.

No comet.

But I think that a touch of mercy is a luxury that we can afford; anyway, we’ll have to be merciful or monotonous. For variety we shall switch from a comet that did not appear to one that did appear. Upon the night of June 30, 1861, a magnificent humiliator appeared in the heavens. One of the most brilliant luminosities of modern times appeared as suddenly as if it had dropped through the shell of our solar system—if it be a solar system. There were letters in the newspapers; correspondents 27wanted to know why this extraordinary object had not been seen coming, by astronomers. Mr. Hind explained. He wrote that the comet was a small object, and consequently had not been seen coming by astronomers. No one could deny the magnificence of the comet; nevertheless Mr. Hind declared that it was very small, looking so large because it was near this earth. This is not the later explanation: nowadays it is said that the comet had been in southern skies, where it had been observed. All contemporaneous astronomers agreed that the comet had come down from the north, and not one of them thought of explaining that it had been invisible because it had been in the south. A luminosity, with a mist around it, altogether the apparent size of the moon, had burst into view. In Recreative Science, 3-143, Webb says that nothing like it had been seen since the year 1680. Nevertheless the orthodox pronouncement was that the object was small and would fade away as quickly as it had appeared. See the Athenaeum, July 6, 1861—“So small an object will soon get beyond our view.” (Hind)

Popular Science Review, 1-513:

That, in April, 1862, the thing was still visible.

Something else that was seen under circumstances that can not be considered triumphant—upon Nov. 28, 1872, Prof. Klinkerfues, of Göttingen, looking for Biela’s comet, saw meteors in the path of the expected comet. He telegraphed to Pogson, of Madras, to look near the star Theta Centauri, and he would see the comet. I’d not say that this was in the field of magic, but it does seem consummate. A dramatic telegram like this electrifies the faithful—an astronomer in the north telling an astronomer far in the south where to look, so definitely naming one special little star in skies invisible in the north. Pogson looked where he was told to look and announced that he saw what he was told to see. But at meetings of the R. A. S., Jan. 10 and March 14, 1873, Captain Tupman pointed out that, even if Biela’s comet had appeared, it would have been nowhere near this star.

Among our later emotions will be indignation against all astronomers who say that they know whether stars are approaching or receding. When we arrive at that subject it will be the 28preciseness of the astronomers that will perhaps inflame us beyond endurance. We note here the far smaller difficulty of determining whether a relatively nearby comet is coming or going. Upon Nov. 6, 1892, Edwin Holmes discovered a comet. In the Jour. B. A. A., 3-182, Holmes writes that different astronomers had calculated its distance from twenty million miles to two hundred million miles, and had determined its diameter to be all the way from twenty-seven thousand miles to three hundred thousand miles. Prof. Young said that the comet was approaching; Prof. Parkhurst wrote merely that the impression was that the comet was approaching the earth; but Prof. Berberich (Eng. Mec., 56-316) announced that, upon Nov. 6, Holmes’ comet had been 36,000,000 miles from this earth, and 6,000,000 miles away upon the 16th, and that the approach was so rapid that, upon the 21st the comet would touch this earth.

The comet, which had been receding, kept on receding.

29

CHAPTER FOUR

Nevertheless I sometimes doubt that astronomers represent especial incompetence. They remind me too much of uplifters and grocers, philanthropists, expert accountants, makers of treaties, characters in international conferences, psychic researchers, biologists. The astronomers seem to me about as capitalists seem to socialists, and about as socialists seem to capitalists, or about as Presbyterians seem to Baptists; as Democrats seem to Republicans, or as artists of one school seem to artists of another school. If the basic fallacies, or the absence of base, in every specialization of thought can be seen by the units of its opposition, why then we see that all supposed foundations in our whole existence are myths, and that all discussion and supposed progress are the conflicts of phantoms and the overthrow of old delusions by new delusions. Nevertheless I am searching for some wider expression that will rationalize all of us—conceiving that what we call irrationality is our view of parts and functions out of relation to an underlying whole; an underlying something that is working out its development in terms of planets and acids and bugs, rivers and labor unions and cyclones, politicians and islands and astronomers. Perhaps we conceive of an underlying nexus in which all things, in our existence, are different manifestations—torn by its hurricanes and quaked by the struggles of Labor against Capital—and then, for the sake of balance, requiring relaxations. It has its rougher hoaxes, and some of the apes and some of the priests, and philosophers and wart hogs are nothing short of horse play; but the astronomers are the ironies of its less peasant-like moments—or the deliciousness of pretending to know whether a far-away star is approaching or receding, and at the same time exactly predicting when a nearby comet, which is receding, will complete its approach. This is cosmic playfulness; such pleasantries enable Existence to bear its catastrophes. Shattered comets and sickened nations and 30the hydrogenic anguishes of the sun—and there must be astronomers for the sake of relaxations.

It will be important to us that the astronomers shall not be less unfortunate in their pronouncements upon motions of the stars than they have turned out to be in other respects. Especially disagreeable to us is the doctrine that stars are variable because dark companies revolve around them; also we prefer to find that nothing fit for somewhat matured minds has been determined as to stars with light companions that encircle them, or revolve with them. If silence be the only true philosophy, and if every positive assertion be a myth, we should easily find requital for our negative preferences.

Prof. Otto Struve was one of the highest of astronomic authorities, and the faithful attribute triumphs to him. Upon March 19, 1873, Prof. Struve announced that he had discovered a companion to the star Procyon. That was an interesting observation, but the mere observation was not the triumph. Some time before, Prof. Auwers, as credulous, if not jocular, as Newton and Leverrier and Adams, had computed the orbit of a hypothetic companion of Procyon’s. Upon a chart of the stars, he had drawn a circle around Procyon. This orbit was calculated in gravitational terms, and a general theme of ours is that all such calculations are only ideal, and relate no more to stars and planets or anything else than do the spotless theories of uplifters to events that occur as spots in the one wide daub of existence. Specifically we wish to discredit this “triumph” of Struve’s and Auwers’, but in general we continue our expression that all uses of the calculus of celestial mechanics are false applications, and that this subject is for æsthetic enjoyment only, and has no place in the science of astronomy, if anybody can think that there is such a science. So, after great labor, or after considerable enjoyment, Auwers drew a circle around Procyon, and announced that that was the orbit of a companion-star. Exactly at the point in this circle where it “should” be, upon March 19, 1873, Struve saw the point of light which, it may be accepted, sooner or later someone would see. According to Agnes Clerke (System of the Stars, p. 173) over and over Struve watched the point of light, and convinced himself that it moved as it “should” move, 31exactly in the calculated orbit. In Reminiscences of an Astronomer, p. 138, Prof. Newcomb tells the story. According to him, an American astronomer then did more than confirm Struve’s observations: he not only saw but exactly measured the supposed companion.

A defect was found between the lenses of Struve’s telescope: it was found that this telescope showed a similar “companion,” about 10″ from every large star. It was found that the more than “confirmatory” determinations by the American astronomer had been upon “a long well-known star.” (Newcomb)

Every astronomic triumph is a bright light accompanied by an imbecility, which may for a while make it variable with diminishments and then be unnoticed. Priestcrafts are not merely tyrannies: they’re necessities. There must be more reassuring ways of telling this story. The good priest J. E. Gore (Studies in Astronomy, p. 104) tells it safely—not a thing except that, in the year 1873, a companion of Procyon’s was, by Struve, “strongly suspected.” Positive assurances of the sciences—they are islands of seeming stability in a cosmic jelly. We shall eclipse the story of Algol with some modern disclosures. In all minds not convinced that earnest and devoted falsifiers are holding back Development, the story, if remembered at all, will soon renew its fictitious lustre. We are centers of tremors in a quaking black jelly. A bright and shining delusion looks like beaconed security.

Sir Robert Ball, in the Story of the Heavens, says that the period in which Algol blinks his magnitudes is 2 days, 20 hours, 48 minutes, and 55 seconds. He gives the details of Prof. Vogel’s calculations upon a speck of light and an invisibility. It is a god-like command that out of the variations of light shall come the diameters of faint appearances and the distance and velocity of the unseeable—that the diameter of the point of light is 1,054,000 miles, and that the diameter of the imperceptibility is 825,000 miles, and that their centers are 3,220,000 miles apart: orbital velocity of Algol, 26 miles a second, and the orbital velocity of the companion, 55 miles a second—should be stated 26.3 miles and 55.4 miles a second (Proctor, Old and New Astronomy, p. 773).

32We come to a classic imposition like this, and at first we feel helpless. We are told that this thing is so. It is as if we were modes of motion and must go on, but are obstructed by an absolute bar of ultimate steel, shining, in our way, with an infinite polish.

But all appearances are illusions.

No one with a microscope doubts this; no one who has gone specially from ordinary beliefs into minuter examination of any subject doubts this, as to his own specific experience—so then, broadly, that all appearances are illusions, and that, by this recognition, we shall dissipate resistances, monsters, dragons, oppressors that we shall meet in our pilgrimage. This bar-like calculation is itself a mode of motion. The static can not absolutely resist the dynamic, because in the act of resisting it becomes itself proportionately the dynamic. We learn that modifications rusted into the steel of our opposition. The period of Algol, which Vogel carried out to a minute’s 55th second, was, after all, so incompetently determined that the whole imposition was nullified—

Astronomical Journal, 11-113:

That, according to Chandler, Algol and his companion do not revolve around each other merely, but revolve together around some second imperceptibility—regularly.

Bull. Soc. Astro. de France, Oct., 1910:

That M. Mora has shown that, in Algol’s variations there were irregularities that neither Vogel nor Chandler had accounted for.

The Companion of Sirius looms up to our recognition that the story must be nonsense, or worse than nonsense—or that two light comedies will now disappear behind something darker. The story of the Companion of Sirius is that Prof. Auwers, having observed, or in his mania for a pencil and something to scribble upon, having supposed he had observed, motions of the star Sirius, had deduced the existence of a companion, and had inevitably calculated its orbit. Early in the year 1862, Alvan Clark, Jr., turned his new telescope upon Sirius, and there, precisely where, according to Auwers’ calculations, it should be, saw the companion. The story is told by Proctor, writing thirty years later: the finding of the companion, in the “precise position of the calculations”; 33Proctor’s statement that, in the thirty years following, the companion had “conformed fairly well with the calculated orbit.”

According to the Annual Record of Science and Industry, 1876-18, the companion, in half the time mentioned by Proctor, had not moved in the calculated orbit. In the Astronomical Register, 15-186, there are two diagrams by Flammarion: one is the orbit of the companion, as computed by Auwers; the other is the orbit, according to a mean of many observations. They do not conform fairly well. They do not conform at all.

I am now temporarily accepting that Flammarion and the other observing astronomers are right, and that the writers like Proctor, who do not say that they made observations of their own, are wrong, though I have data for thinking that there is no such companion-star. When Clark turned his telescope upon Sirius, the companion was found exactly where Auwers said it would be found. According to Flammarion and other astronomers, had he looked earlier or later it would not have been in this position. Then, in the name of the one calculus that astronomers seem never to have heard of, by what circumstances could that star have been precisely where it should be, when looked for, Jan. 31, 1862, if, upon all other occasions, it would not be where it should be?

Astronomical Register, 1-94:

A representation of Sirius—but with six small stars around him—an account, by Dr. Dawes, of observations, by Goldschmidt, upon the “companion” and five other small stars near Sirius. Dr. Dawes’ accusation, or opinion, is that it scarcely seems possible that some of these other stars were not seen by Clark. If Alvan Clark saw six stars, at various distances from Sirius, and picked out the one that was at the required distance, as if that were the only one, he dignifies our serials with a touch of something other than comedy. For Goldschmidt’s own announcement, see Monthly Notices, R. A. S., 23-181, 243.

34

CHAPTER FIVE

Smugness and falseness and sequences of re-adjusting fatalities—and yet so great is the hypnotic power of astronomic science that it can outlive its “mortal” blows by the simple process of forgetting them, and, in general, simply by denying that it can make mistakes. Upon page 245, Old and New Astronomy, Richard Proctor says—“The ideas of astronomers in these questions of distance have not changed, and, in the present position of astronomy, based (in such respects) on absolute demonstration, they can not change.”

Sounds that have roared in the sky, and their vibrations have shaken down villages—if these be the voices of Development, commanding that opinions shall change, we shall learn what will become of the Proctors and their “absolute demonstrations.” Lights that have appeared in the sky—that they are gleams upon the armament of Marching Organization. “There can be only one explanation of meteors”—I think it is that they are shining spear-points of slayers of dogmas. I point to the sky over a little town in Perthshire, Scotland—there may be a new San Salvador—it may be a new Plymouth Rock. I point to the crater Aristarchus, of the moon—there, for more than a century, a lighthouse may have been signalling. Whether out of profound meditations, or farrago and bewilderment, I point, directly, or miscellaneously, and, if only a few of a multitude of data be accepted, unformulable perturbations rack an absolute sureness, and the coils of our little horizons relax their constrictions.

I indicate that, in these pages, which are banners in a cosmic procession, I do feel a sense of responsibility, but how to maintain any great seriousness I do not know, because still is our subject astronomical “triumphs.”

Once upon a time there was a young man, aged eighteen, whose name was Jeremiah Horrox. He was no astronomer. He was interested in astronomic subjects, but it may be that we shall agree 35that a young man of eighteen, who had not been heard of by one astronomer of his time, was an outsider. There was a transit of Venus in December, 1639, but not a grown-up astronomer in the world expected it, because the not always great and infallible Kepler had predicated the next transit of Venus for the year 1761. According to Kepler, Venus would pass below the sun in December, 1639. But there was another calculation: it was by the great, but sometimes not so great, Lansberg: that, in December, 1639, Venus would pass over the upper part of the sun. Jeremiah Horrox was an outsider. He was able to reason that, if Venus could not pass below the sun, and also over the upper part of the sun, she might take a middle course. Venus did pass over the middle part of the sun’s disc; and Horrox reported the occurrence, having watched it.

I suppose this was one of the most agreeable humiliations in the annals of busted inflations. One thinks sympathetically of the joy that went out from seventeenth-century Philistines. The story is told to this day by the Proctors and Balls and Newcombs: the way they tell this story of the boy who was able to conclude that something that could not occupy two extremes might be intermediate, and thereby see something that no professional observer of the time saw, is a triumph of absorption:

That the transit of Venus, in December, 1639, was observed by Jeremiah Horrox, “the great astronomer.”

We shall make some discoveries as we go along, and some of them will be worse thought of than others, but there is a discovery here that may be of interest: the secret of immortality—that there is a mortal resistance to everything; but that the thing that can keep on incorporating, or assimilating within itself, its own mortal resistances, will live forever. By its absorptions, the science of astronomy perpetuates its inflations, but there have been instances of indigestion. See the New York Herald, Sept. 16, 1909. Here Flammarion, who probably no longer asserts any such thing, claims Dr. Cook’s “discovery of the north pole” as an “astronomical conquest.” Also there are other ways. One suspects that the treatment that Dr. Lescarbault received from Flammarion illustrates other ways.

In the year 1859, it seems that Dr. Lescarbault was something 36of an astronomer. It seems that as far back as that he may have known a planet when he saw one, because, in an interview, he convinced Leverrier that he did know a planet when he saw one. He had at least heard of the planet Venus, because in the year 1882 he published a paper upon indications that Venus has an atmosphere. Largely because of an observation, or an announcement, of his, occurred the climax of Leverrier’s fiascos: prediction of an intra-Mercurial planet that did not appear when it “should” appear. My suspicion is that astronomers pardonably, but frailly, had it in for Lescarbault, and that in the year 1891 came an occurrence that one of them made an opportunity. Early in the year 1891. Dr. Lescarbault announced that, upon the night of Jan. 11, 1891, he had seen a new star. At the next meeting of the French Academy, Flammarion rose, spoke briefly, and sat down without over-doing. He said that Lescarbault had “discovered” Saturn.

If a navigator of at least thirty years’ experience should announce that he had discovered an island, and if that island should turn out to be Bermuda, he would pair with Lescarbault—as Flammarion made Lescarbault appear. Even though I am a writer upon astronomical subjects, myself, I think that even I should know Saturn, if I should see him, at least in such a period as the year 1891, when the rings were visible. It is perhaps an incredible mistake. However, it will be agreeable to some of us to find that astronomers have committed just such almost incredible mistakes—

In Cosmos, n. s., 42-467, is a list of astronomers who reported “unknown” dark bodies that they had seen crossing the disc of the sun:

La Concha Montevideo Nov. 5, 1789;

Keyser Amsterdam Nov. 9, 1802;

Fisher Lisbon May 5, 1832;

Houzeau Brussels May 8, 1845.

According to the Nautical Almanac, the planet Mercury did cross the disc of the sun upon these dates.

It is either that the Flammarions do so punish those who see 37the new and the undesired, or that astronomers do “discover” Saturn, and do not know Mercury when they see him—and that Buckle overlooked something when he wrote that only the science of history attracts inferior minds often not fit even for clergymen.

Whatever we think of Flammarion, we admire his deftness. But we shall have an English instance of the ways in which Astronomy maintains itself and controls those who say that they see that which they “should” not see, which does seem beefy. One turns the not very attractive-looking pages of the English Mechanic, 1893, casually, perhaps, at any rate in no expectations of sensations—glaring at one, a sketch of such a botanico-pathologic monstrosity as a musk melon with rows of bunions on it (English Mechanic, Oct. 20, 1893). The reader is told, by Andrew Barclay, F. R. A. S., Kilmarnock, Scotland, that this enormity is the planet Jupiter, according to the speculum of his Gregorian telescope.

In the next issue of the English Mechanic, Capt. Noble, F. R. A. S., writes, gently enough, that, if he had such a telescope, he would dispose of the optical parts for whatever they would bring, and would make a chimney cowl of the tube.

English Mechanic, 1893-2-309—the planet Mars, by Andrew Barclay—a dark sphere, surrounded by a thick ring of lighter material; attached to it, another sphere, of half its diameter—a sketch as gross and repellent to a conventionalist as the museum-freak, in whose body the head of his dangling twin is embedded, its dwarfed body lopping out from his side. There is a description by Mr. Barclay, according to whom the main body is red, and the protuberance blue.

Capt. Noble—“Preposterous ... last straw that breaks the camel’s back!”

Mr. Barclay comes back with some new observations upon Jupiter’s lumps, and then, in the rest of the volume is not heard from again. One reads on, interested in quieter matters, and gradually forgets the controversy—

English Mechanic, August 23, 1897:

A gallery of monstrosities: Andrew Barclay, signing himself “F. R. A. S.,” exhibiting:

38The planet Jupiter, six times encircled with lumps; afflicted Mars, with his partly embedded twin reduced in size, but still a distress to all properly trained observers; the planet Saturn, shaped like a mushroom with a ring around it.

Capt. Noble—“Mr. Barclay is not a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, and, were the game worth the candle, might be restrained by injunction from so describing himself!” And upon page 362, of this volume of the English Mechanic, Capt. Noble calls the whole matter “a pseudo F. R. A. S.’s crazy hallucinations.”

Lists of the Fellows of the Royal Astronomical Society, from June, 1875 to June, 1896:

“Barclay, Andrew, Kilmarnock, Scotland; elected Feb. 8, 1856.”

I can not find the list for 1897 in the libraries. List for 1898—Andrew Barclay’s name omitted. Thou shalt not see lumps on Jupiter.

Every one of Barclay’s observations has something to support it. All conventional representations of Jupiter show encirclements by strings of rotundities that we are told are cloud-forms, but, in the Jour. B. A. A., Dec. 1910, is published a paper by Dr. Downing, entitled “Is Jupiter Humpy?” suggesting that various phenomena upon Jupiter agree with the idea that there are protuberances upon the planet. A common appearance, said to be an illusion, is Saturn as an oblong, if not mushroom-shaped: see any good index for observations upon the “square-shouldered aspect” of Saturn. In L’Astronomie, 1889-135, is a sketch of Mars, according to Fontana, in the year 1636—a sphere enclosed in a ring; in the center of the sphere a great protruding body, said, by Fontana, to have looked like a vast, black cone.

But, whether this or that should amuse or enrage us, should be accepted or rejected, is not to me the crux; but Andrew Barclay’s own opening words are:

That, through a conventional telescope, conventional appearances are seen, and that a telescope is tested by the conventionality of its disclosures; but that there may be new optical principles, or applications, that may be, to the eye and the present telescope, what once the conventional telescope was to the eye—in times 39when scientists refused to look at the preposterous, enraging, impossible moons of Jupiter.

In the English Mechanic, 33-327, is a letter from the astronomer, A. Stanley Williams. He had written previously upon double stars, their colors and magnitudes. Another astronomer, Herbert Sadler, had pointed out some errors. Mr. Williams acknowledges the errors, saying that some were his own, and that some were from Smyth’s Cycle of Celestial Objects. In the English Mechanic, 33-377, Sadler says that, earnestly, he would advise Williams not to use the new edition of Smyth’s Cycle, because, with the exception of vol. 40, Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society, “a more disgracefully inaccurate” catalog of double stars had never been published. “If,” says one astronomer to the other astronomer, “you have a copy of this miserable production, sell it for waste paper. It is crammed with the most stupid errors.”

A new character appears. He is George F. Chambers, F. R. A. S., author of a long list of astronomical works, and a tract, entitled, Where Are You Going, Sunday? He, too, is earnest. In this early correspondence, nothing ulterior is apparent, and we suppose that it is in the cause of Truth that he is so earnest. Says one astronomer that the other astronomer is “evidently one of those self-sufficient young men, who are nothing, if not abusive.” But can Mr. Sadler have so soon forgotten what was done to him, on a former occasion, after he had slandered Admiral Smyth? Chambers challenges Sadler to publish a list of, say fifty “stupid errors” in the book. He quotes the opinion of the Astronomer Royal: that the book was a work of “sterling merit.” “Airy vs. Sadler,” he says: “which is it to be?”

We began not very promisingly. Few excitements seemed to lurk in such a subject as double stars, their colors and magnitudes; but slander and abuse are livelier, and now enters curiosity: we’d like to know what was done to Herbert Sadler.

Late in the year 1876, Herbert Sadler was elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. In Monthly Notices, R. A. S., Jan., 1879, appears his first paper that was read to the Society: Notes on the late Admiral Smyth’s Cycle of Celestial Objects, 40volume second, known as the Bedford Catalogue. With no especial vehemence, at least according to our own standards of repression, Sadler expresses himself upon some “extraordinary mistakes” in this work.

At the meeting of the Society, May 9, 1879, there was an attack upon Sadler, and it was led by Chambers, or conducted by Chambers, who cried out that Sadler had slandered a great astronomer, and demanded that Sadler should resign. In the report of this meeting, published in the Observatory, there is not a trace of anybody’s endeavors to find out whether there were errors in this book or not: Chambers ignored everything but his accusation of slander, and demanded again that Sadler should resign. In Monthly Notices, 39-389, the Council of the Society published regrets that it had permitted publication of Sadler’s paper, “which was entirely unsupported by the citation of instances upon which his judgment was founded.”

We find that it was Mr. Chambers who had revised and published the new edition of Smyth’s Cycle.

In the English Mechanic, Chambers challenged Sadler to publish, say, fifty “stupid errors.” See page 451, vol. 33, English Mechanic—Sadler lists just fifty “stupid errors.” He says that he could have listed, not 50, but 250, not trivial, but of the “grossest kind.” He says that in one set of 167 observations, 117 were wrong.

The English Mechanic drops out of this comedy with the obvious title, but developments go on. Evidently withdrawing its “regrets,” the Council permitted publication of a criticism of Chambers’ edition of Smyth’s Cycle, in Monthly Notices, 40-497, and the language in this criticism, by S. W. Burnham, was no less interpretable as slanderous than was Sadler’s: that Smyth’s data were “either roughly approximate or grossly incorrect, and so constantly recurring that it was impossible to explain that they were ordinary errors of observation.” Burnham lists 30 pages of errors.

Following is a paper by E. B. Knobel, who published 17 pages of instances in which, in his opinion, Mr. Burnham had been too severe. Knowing of no objection by Burnham to this reduction, we have left 13 pages of errors in one standard astronomical 41work, which may fairly be considered as representative of astronomical work in general, inasmuch as it was, in the opinion of the Astronomer Royal, a book of “sterling merit.”

I think that now we have accomplished something. After this we should all get along more familiarly and agreeably together. Thirteen pages of errors in one standard astronomical work are reassuring; there is a likeable fallibility here that should make for better relations. If the astronomers were what they think they are, we might as well make squeaks of disapproval against Alpine summits. As to astronomers who calculate positions of planets—of whom he was one—Newcomb, in Reminiscences of an Astronomer, says—“The men who have done it are therefore, in intellect, the select few of the human race—an aristocracy above all others in the scale of being.” We could never get along comfortably with such awful selectness as that. We are grateful to Mr. Sadler, in the cause of more comfortable relations.

42

CHAPTER SIX

English Mechanic, 56-184:

That, upon April 25, 1892, Archdeacon Nouri climbed Mt. Ararat. It was his hope that he should find something of archæologic compensation for his clamberings. He found Noah’s Ark.

About the same time, Dr. Holden, Director of the Lick Observatory, was watching one of the polished and mysterious-looking instruments that, in the new ikonology, have replaced the images of saints. Dr. Holden was waiting for the appointed moment of the explosion of a large quantity of dynamite in San Francisco Bay. The moment came. The polished little “saint” revealed to the faithful scientist. He wrote an account of the record, and sent copies to the San Francisco newspapers. Then he learned that the dynamite had not been fired off. He sent a second messenger after the first messenger, and, because messengers sometimes have velocities proportional to urgencies—“the Observatory escaped ridicule by a narrow margin.” See the Observatory, 20-467. This revelation came from Prof. Colton, who, though probably faithful to all the “saints,” did not like Dr. Holden.

The system that Archdeacon Nouri represented lost its power because its claims exceeded all conceivableness, and because, in other respects, of its inertness to the obvious. The system that Dr. Holden represented is not different: there is the same seeing of whatever may be desirable, and the same profound meditations upon the remote, with the same inattention to fairly acceptable starting-points. The astronomers like to tell audiences of just what gases are burning in an unimaginably remote star, but have never reasonably made acceptable, for instance, that this earth is round, to start with. Of course I do not mean to say that this, or anything else, can be positively proved, but it is depressing to 43hear it said, so authoritatively, that the round shadow of this earth upon the moon proves that this earth is round, whereas records of angular shadows are common, and whereas, if this earth were a cube, its straight sides would cast a rounded shadow upon the convex moon. That the first part of a receding vessel to disappear should be the lower part may be only such an illusion of perspective as that by which railroad tracks seem to dip toward each other in the distance. Meteors sometimes appear over one part of the horizon and then seem to curve down behind the opposite part of the horizon, whereas they describe no such curve, because to a string of observers each observer is at the center of the seeming curve.

Once upon a time—about the year 1870—occurred an unusual sporting event. John Hampden, who was noted for his piety and his bad language, whose avowed purpose was to support the principles of this earth’s earliest geodesist, offered to bet five hundred pounds that he could prove the flatness of this earth. Somewhere in England is the Bedford Canal, and along a part of it is a straight, unimpeded view, six miles in length. Orthodox doctrine—or the doctrine of the newer orthodoxy, because John Hampden considered that he was orthodox—is that the earth’s curvature is expressible in the formula of 8 inches for the first mile, and then the square of the distance times 8 inches. For two miles, then, the square of 2, or 4, times 8. An object six miles away should be depressed 288 inches, or, allowing for refraction, according to Proctor (Old and New Astronomy) 216 inches. Hampden said that an object six miles away, upon this part of the Bedford Canal, was not depressed as it “should” be. Dr. Alfred Russell Wallace took up the bet. Mr. Walsh, Editor of the Field, was the stakeholder. A procession went to the Bedford Canal. Objects were looked at through telescopes, or looked for, and the decision was that Hampden had lost. There was rejoicing in the fold of the chosen, though Hampden, in one of his most furious bombardments of verses from the Bible, charged conspiracy and malfeasance and confiscation, and what else I don’t know, piously and intemperately declaring that he had been defrauded.

In the English Mechanic, 80-40, some one writes to find out 44about the “Bedford Canal Experiment.” We learn that the experiment had been made again. The correspondent writes that, if there were basis to the rumors that he had heard, there must be something wrong with established doctrine. Upon page 138, Lady Blount answers—that, upon May 11, 1904, she had gone to the Bedford Canal, accompanied by Mr. E. Clifton, a well-known photographer, who was himself uninfluenced by her motives, which were the familiar ones of attempting to restore the old gentleman who first took up the study of geodesy. However she seethes with neither piety nor profanity. She says that, with his telescopic camera, Mr. Clifton had photographed a sheet, six miles away, though by conventional theory the sheet should have been invisible. In a later number of the English Mechanic, a reproduction of this photograph is published. According to this evidence this earth is flat, or is a sphere enormously greater than is generally supposed. But at the 1901 meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Mr. H. Yule Oldham read a paper upon his investigations at the Bedford Canal. He, too, showed photographs. In his photographs, everything that should have been invisible was invisible.

I accept that anybody who is convinced that still are there relics upon Mt. Ararat, has only to climb Mt. Ararat, and he must find something that can be said to be part of Noah’s Ark, petrified perhaps. If someone else should be convinced that a mistake has been made, and that the mountain is really Pike’s Peak, he has only to climb Pike’s Peak and prove that the most virtuous of all lands was once the Holy Land. The meaning that I read in the whole subject is that, in this Dark Age that we’re living in, not even such rudimentary matters as the shape of this earth have ever been investigated except now and then to support somebody’s theory, because astronomers have instinctively preferred the remote and the not so easily understandable and the safe from external inquiry. In Earth Features and Their Meaning, Prof. Hobbs says that this earth is top-shaped, quite as the sloping extremities of Africa and South America suggest. According to Prof. Hobbs, observations upon the pendulum suggest that this earth is shaped like a top. Some years ago, Dr. Gregory read a paper at a meeting of the Royal Geographical Society, 45giving data to support the theory of a top-shaped earth. In the records of the Society, one may read a report of the discussion that followed. There was no ridiculing. The President of the Society closed the discussion with virtual endorsement, recalling that it was Christopher Columbus who first said that this earth is top-shaped. For other expressions of this revolt against ancient dogmas, see Bull. Soc. Astro. de France, 17-315; 18-143; Pop. Sci. News, 31-234; Eng. Mec., 77-159; Sci. Amer., 100-441.

As to supposed motions of this earth, axial and orbital, circumstances are the same, despite the popular supposition that the existence of these motions has been established by syntheses of data and by unanswerable logic. All scientists, philosophers, religionists, are today looking back, wondering what could have been the matter with their predecessors to permit them to believe what they did believe. Granted that there will be posterity, we shall be predecessors. Then what is it that is conventionally taught today that will in the future seem as imbecilic as to all present orthodoxies seem the vaporings of preceding systems?

Well, for instance, that it is this earth that moves, though the sun seems to, by the same illusion by which to passengers on a boat, the shore seems to move, though it is the boat that is moving.

Apply this reasoning to the moon. The moon seems to move around the earth—but to passengers on a boat, the shore seems to move, whereas it is the boat that is moving—therefore the moon does not move.

As to the motions of the planets and stars that co-ordinate with the idea of a moving earth—they co-ordinate equally well with the idea of a stationary earth.

In the system that was conceived by Copernicus I find nothing that can be said to resemble foundation: nothing but the appeal of greater simplicity. An earth that rotates and revolves is simpler to conceive of than is a stationary earth with a rigid composition of stars, swinging around it, stars kept apart by some unknown substance, or inter-repulsion. But all those who think that simplification is a standard to judge by are referred to Herbert Spencer’s compilations of data indicating that advancing knowledge complicates, making, then, complexity, and 46not simplicity, the standard by which to judge the more advanced. My own acceptance is that there are fluxes one way and then the other way: that the Ptolemaic system was complex and was simplified; that, out of what was once a clarification, new complications have arisen, and that again will come flux toward simplification or clarification—that the simplification by Copernicus has now developed into an incubus of unintelligibilities revolving around a farrago of inconsistencies, to which the complexities of Ptolemy are clear geometry: miracles, incredibilities, puerilities; tottering deductions depending upon flimsy agreements; brutalized observations that are slaves to infatuated principles—

And one clear call that is heard above the rumble of readjusting collapses—the call for a Neo-astronomy—it may not be our Neo-astronomy.

Prof. Young, for instance, in his Manual of Astronomy, says that there are no common, obvious proofs that the earth moves around the sun, but that there are three abstrusities, all of modern determination. Then, if Copernicus founded the present system, he founded upon nothing. He had nothing to base upon. He either never heard of, or could not detect one of these abstrusities. All his logic is represented in his reasoning upon this earth’s rotundity: that this earth is round, because of a general tendency to sphericity, manifesting, for instance, in fruits and in drops of water—showing that he must have been unaware not only of abstrusities, but of icicles and bananas and oysters. It is not that I am snobbishly deriding the humble and more than questionable ancestry of modern astronomy. I am pointing out that a doctrine came into existence with nothing for a foundation: not a datum, not one observation to found upon; no astronomical principles, no mechanical principles to justify it. Our inquiry will be as to how, in the annals of false architecture, it could ever be said that—except miraculously, of course—a foundation was subsequently slipped under this baseless structure, dug under, rammed under, or God knows how devised and fashioned.

47

CHAPTER SEVEN

The three abstrusities:

The aberration of light, the annual parallax of the stars, the regular, annual shift of the lines of the stellar spectra.

By the aberration of light is meant a displacement of all stars, during a year’s observation, by which stars near the pole of the ecliptic describe circles, stars nearer the ecliptic describe ellipses, and the stars of the ecliptic, only little straight lines. It is supposed that light has velocity, and that these forms represent the ratio between the velocity of light and the supposed velocity of this earth in its orbit. In the year, 1725, Bradley conceived of the present orthodox explanation of the aberration-forms of the stars: that they reflect or represent the path that this earth traverses around the sun, as it would look from the stars, appearing virtually circular from stars in the pole of the ecliptic, for instance. In Bradley’s day there were no definite delusions as to the traversing by this earth of another path in space, as part of a whole moving system, so Bradley felt simple and satisfied. About a century later by some of the most amusing reasoning that one could be entertained with, astronomers decided that the whole supposed solar system is moving, at a rate of about 13 miles a second from the region of Sirius to a point near Vega, all this occurring in northern skies, because southern astronomers had not very much to say at that time. Now, then, if at one time in the year, and in one part of its orbit, this earth is moving in the direction in which the whole solar system is moving, there we have this earth traversing a distance that is the sum of its own motion and the general motion; then when the earth rounds about and retraces, there we have its own velocity minus the general velocity. The first abstrusity, then, is knocked flat on its technicalities, because the aberration-forms, then, do not reflect the annual motion of this earth: if, in conventional terms, though the path of this earth is circular or elliptic relatively to the sun, 48when compounding with solar motion it is not so formed relatively to stars; and there will have to be another explanation for the aberration-forms.

The second supposed proof that this earth moves around the sun is in the parallax of the stars. In conventional terms, it is said that opposite points in this earth’s orbit are 185,000,000 miles apart. It is said that stars, so differently viewed, are minutely displaced against their backgrounds. Again solar-motion—if, in conventional terms, this earth has been traveling, as part of the solar system, from Sirius, toward Vega, in 2,000 years this earth has traveled 819,936,000,000 miles. This distance is 4,500 times the distance that is the base line for orbital parallax. Then displacement of the stars by solar-motion parallax in 2,000 years, should be 4,500 times the displacement by orbital parallax, in one year. Give to orbital parallax as minute a quantity as is consistent with the claims made for it, and 4,500 times that would dent the Great Dipper and nick the Sickle of Leo, and perhaps make the Dragon look like a dragon. But not a star in the heavens has changed more than doubtfully since the stars were catalogued by Hipparchus, 2,000 years ago. If, then, there be minute displacements of stars that are attributed to orbital parallax, they will have to be explained in some other way, if evidently the sun does not move from Sirius toward Vega, and if then, quite as reasonably, this earth may not move.

Prof. Young’s third “proof” is spectroscopic.

To what degree can spectroscopy in astronomy be relied upon?

Bryant, A History of Astronomy, p. 206:

That, according to Bélopolsky, Venus rotates in about 24 hours, as determined by the spectroscope; that, according to Dr. Slipher, Venus rotates in about 224 days, as determined by the spectroscope.

According to observations too numerous to make it necessary to cite any, the seeming motions of stars, occulted by the moon, show that the moon has atmosphere. According to the spectroscope, there is no atmosphere upon the moon (Pubs. Astro. Soc. Pacific, vol. 6, no. 37).

The ring of light around Venus, during the transits of 1874 and 1882, indicated that Venus has atmosphere. Most astronomers 49say that Venus has an atmosphere of extreme density, obscuring the features of the planet. According to spectrum analysis, by Sir William Huggins, Venus has no atmosphere (Eng. Mec., 4-22).

In the English Mechanic, 89-439, are published results of spectroscopic examinations of Mars, by Director Campbell, of the Lick Observatory: that there is no oxygen, and that there is no water vapor on Mars. In Monthly Notices, R. A. S., 27-178, are published results of spectroscopic examinations of Mars by Huggins: abundance of oxygen; same vapors as the vapors of this earth.

These are the amusements of our Pilgrim’s Progress, which has new San Salvadors for its goals, or new Plymouth Rocks for its expectations—but the experiences of pilgrims have variety—

In 1895, at the Allegheny Observatory, Prof. Keeler undertook to determine the rotation-period of Saturn’s rings, by spectroscopy. It is gravitational gospel that particles upon the outside of the rings move at the rate of 10.69 miles a second; particles upon the inner edge, 13.01 miles a second. Prof. Keeler’s determinations were what Sir Robert Ball calls “brilliant confirmation of the mathematical deduction.” Prof. Keeler announced that according to the spectroscope, the outside particles of the rings of Saturn move at the rate of 10.1 miles a second, and that the inner particles move at the rate of 12.4 miles a second—“as they ought to,” says Prof. Young, in his gospel, Elements of Astronomy.

One reads of a miracle like this, the carrying out into decimals of different speeds of different particles in parts of a point of light, the parts of which can not be seen at all without a telescope, whereby they seem to constitute a solid and motionless structure, and one admires, or one worships, according to one’s inexperience—

Or there comes upon one a sense of imposture and imposition that is not very bearable. Imposition or imposture or captivation—and it’s as if we’ve been trapped and have been put into a revolving cage, some of the bars revolving at unthinkable speed, and other bars of it going around still faster, even though not conceivable. Disbelieve as we will, deride and accuse, and think of all the other false demonstrations that we have encountered, 50as we will—there’s the buzz of the bars that encircle us. The concoction that has caged us is one of the most brilliant harlots in modern prostitution: we’re imprisoned at the pleasure of a favorite in the harem of the God of Gravitation. That’s some relief: language always is—but how are we to “determine” that the rings of Saturn do not move as they “ought” to, and thereby add more to the discrediting of spectroscopy in astronomy?

A gleam on a planet that’s like shine on a sword to deliver us—

The White Spot of Saturn—

A bright and shining deliverer.

There’s a gleam that will shatter concoctions and stop velocities. There’s a shining thing on the planet Saturn, and the blow that it shines is lightning. Thus far has gone a revolution of 10.1 miles a second, but it stops by magic against magic; no farther buzzes a revolution of 12.4 miles a second—that the rings of Saturn may not move as, to flatter one little god they “ought” to, because, by the handiwork of Universality, they may be motionless.

Often has a white spot been seen upon the rings of Saturn: by Schmidt, Bond, Secchi, Schroeter, Harding, Schwabe, De Vico—a host of other astronomers.

It is stationary.

In the English Mechanic, 49-195, Thomas Gwyn Elger publishes a sketch of it as he saw it upon the nights of April 18 and 20, 1889. It occupied a position partly upon one ring and partly upon the other, showing no distortion. Let Prof. Keeler straddle two concentric merry-go-rounds, whirling at different velocities: there will be distortion. See vol. 49, English Mechanic, for observation after observation by astronomers upon this appearance, when seen for several months in the year 1889, the observers agreeing that, no matter what are the demands of theory, this fixed spot did indicate that the rings of Saturn do not move.

The White Spot on Saturn has blasted minor magic. He has little, black retainers who now function in the cause of completeness—the little, black spots of Saturn—

Nature, 53-109:

That, in July and August, 1895, Prof. Mascari, of the Catania 51Observatory, had seen dark spots upon the crepe ring of Saturn. The writer in Nature says that such duration is not easy to explain, if the rings of Saturn be formations of moving particles, because different parts of the discolored areas would have different velocities, so that soon would they distort and diffuse.

Certainly enough, relatively to my purpose, which is to find out for myself, and to find out with anybody else who may be equally impressed with a necessity, a brilliant, criminal thing has been slain by a gleam of higher intensity. Certainly enough, then, with the execution of one of its foremost exponents, the whole subject of spectroscopy in astronomy has been cast into rout and disgrace, of course only to ourselves, and not in the view of manufacturers of spectroscopes, for instance; but a phantom thing dies a phantom death, and must be slain over and over again.

I should say that just what is called the spectrum of a star is not commonly understood. It is one of the greatest uncertainties in science. The spectrum of a star is a ghost in the first place, but this ghost has to be further attenuated by a secondary process, and the whole appearance trembles so with the twinkling of a star that the stories told by spectra are gasps of palsied phantoms. So it is that, in one of the greatest indefinitenesses in science, an astronomer reads in a bewilderment that can be made to correspond with any desideratum. So it is our acceptance that when any faint, tremulous story told by a spectrum becomes standardized, the conventional astronomer is told, by the spectroscope, what he should be told, but that when anything new appears, for which there is no convention, the bewilderment of the astronomers is made apparent, and the worthlessness of spectroscopy in astronomy is shown to all except those who do not want to be shown. Upon the first of February, 1892, Dr. Thomas D. Anderson, of Edinburgh, discovered a new star that became known as Nova Aurigae. Here was something as to which there was no dogmatic “determination.” Each astronomer had to see, not what he should, but what he could. We shall see that the astronomers might as well have gone, for information, to some of Mrs. Piper’s “controls” as to think of depending upon their own ghosts.

In Monthly Notices, Feb., 1893, it is said that probably for seven weeks, up to the time of calculation, one part of this new 52star had been receding at a rate of 230 miles a second, and another part approaching at a rate of 320 miles a second, giving to these components a distance apart of 550 miles × 60 × 60 × 24 × 49, whatever that may be.

But there was another séance. This time Dr. Vogel was the medium. The ghosts told Dr. Vogel that the new star had three parts, one approaching this earth at the rate of about 420 miles a second, another approaching at a rate of 22 miles a second, a third part receding at a rate of 300 miles a second. See Jour. B. A. A., 2-258.

After that, the “controls” became hysterical. They flickered that there were six parts of this new star, according to Dr. Lowell’s Evolution of Worlds, p. 9. The faithful will be sorry to read that Lowell revolted. He says: “There is not room for so many on the stage of the cosmic drama.” For other reasons for repudiating spectroscopy, or spiritualism, in astronomy, read what else Lowell says upon this subject.

Nova Aurigae became fainter. Accordingly, Prof. Klinkerfues “found” that two bodies had passed, and had inflamed, each other, and that the light of their mutual disturbances would soon disappear (Jour. B. A. A., 2-365).

Nova Aurigae became brighter. Accordingly, Dr. Campbell “determined” that it was approaching this earth at a rate of 128 miles a second (Jour. B. A. A., 2-504).

Then Dr. Espin went into a trance. It was revealed to him that the object was a nebula (Eng. Mec., 56-61). Communication from Dr. and Mrs. Huggins, to the Royal Society—not a nebula, but a star (Eng. Mec., 57-397). See Nature, 47-352, 425—that, according to M. Eugen Gothard the spectrum of N. A. agreed “perfectly” with the spectrum of a nebula: that, according to Dr. Huggins, no contrast could be more striking than the difference between the spectrum of N. A., and the spectrum of a nebula.

For an account of the revelations at Stonyhurst Observatory, see Mems. R. A. S., 51-129—that there never had been a composition of bodies moving at the rates that were so definitely announced, because N. A. was a single star.

53Though I have read some of the communications from “Rector” and “Dr. Phinuit” to Mrs. Piper, I can not think that they ever mouthed sillier babble than was flickered by the star-ghosts to the astronomers in the year 1892. We noted Prof. Klinkerfues’ “finding” that two stars had passed each other, and that the illumination from their mutual perturbations would soon subside. There was no such disappearance. For observations upon N. A., ten years later, see Monthly Notices, 62-65. For Prof. Barnard’s observations twenty years later, see Sci. Amer. Sup., 76-154.

The spectroscope is useful in a laboratory. Spoons are useful in a kitchen. If any other pilgrim should come upon a group of engineers trying to dig a canal with spoons, his experience and his temptation to linger would be like ours as to the astronomers and their attempted application of the spectroscope. I don’t know what of remotest acceptability may survive in the third supposed proof that this earth moves around the sun, though we have not found it necessary to go into the technicalities of the supposed proof. I think we have killed the phantom thing, but I hope we have not quite succeeded, because we are moved more by the æsthetics of slaughter than by plain murderousness: we shall find unity in disposing of the third “proof” by the means by which the two others were disposed of—

Regular Annual Shift of Spectral Lines versus Solar Motion—

That, if this earth moves around the sun, the shift might be found by scientific Mrs. Pipers so to indicate—

But that if part of the time this earth, as a part of one traveling system, moves at a rate of 19 plus 13 miles a second and then part of the time at a rate of 19 minus 13 miles a second, compounding with great complexities at transverse times, that is the end of the regular annual shift that is supposed to apply to orbital motion.

We need not have admitted in the first place that the three abstrusities are resistances: however we have a liking for revelations ourselves. Aberration and Parallax and Spectral Lines do not indicate only that this earth moves relatively to the stars: quite as convincingly they indicate that the stars in one composition gyrate relatively to a central and stationary earth, all of them 54in one concavity around this earth, some of them showing faintest of parallax, if this earth be not quite central to the revolving whole.

Something that I did not mention before, though I referred to Lowell’s statements, is that astronomers now admit, or state, that the shift of spectral lines, which they say indicates that this earth moves around the sun, also indicates any one of three other circumstances, or sets of circumstances. Some persons will ask why I didn’t say so at first, and quit the meaningless subject. May be it was a weakness of mine—something of a sporting instinct, I fear me, I have at times. I lingered, perhaps slightly intoxicated, with the deliciousness of Prof. Keeler and his decimals—like someone at a race track, determining that a horse is running at a rate of 2653 feet and 4 inches a minute, by a method that means that no more than it means that the horse is brown, is making clattering sounds, or has a refreshing odor. For a study of a state of mind like that of many clergymen who try to believe in Moses, and in Darwin, too, see the works of Prof. Young, for instance. This astronomer teaches the conventional spectroscopic doctrine, and also mentions the other circumstances that make the doctrine meaningless. Such inconsistencies are phenomena of all transitions from the old to the new.